Bobbie Heisterkamp is a bully
Later on, when we get past what displays in the teaser, I will let you know exactly what I think Bobbie Heisterkamp is.
This is the back of a black and white postcard. It showed up on Ebay last week, poorly described (no mention of the top of Trail Ridge Road or Fall River Pass, just "Estes Park" plus some other useless adjectives like "vintage" and the cancellation date). I was interested in the postcard mostly because of the view on the front, and the fact that the photograph on Ebay was so poor the lister hadn't noticed, or hadn't bothered to mention, there was a title on the bottom, white on white, that indicated, illegible as it was, the production facility.
So it was a 7-day auction, and, if you don't know Estes Park postcards on Ebay, you don't realize that you can't just enter a bid at any time during the seven days the auction is being conducted and walk away, thinking that if you enter a high-enough maximum, no one is stupid enough to pay $2400 for the sole reason of outbidding you on a postcard.
For Estes Park postcards, because of Bobbie Heisterkamp, your only hope of getting them is to wait until the very last second, and enter a very high bid, an extremely high bid, something you wouldn't ever pay in the real world but are forced to pay because Bobbie Heisterkamp has a sickness, an illness fostered by our local museum, which would be laughable and easily dismissed if Bobbie Heisterkamp wanted one of every postcard ever made (since that is not possible, it would be like saying "I'm going to collect the first edition of every book ever printed), but becomes really bizarre and fetishistic when you realize, in the postcard world, Bobbie Heisterkamp wants or somehow "needs" every single copy of every single postcard ever printed (the equivalent from the publishing world being that she doesn't just want the first edition of every book ever printed, she must have every single copy of every single book ever printed).
Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but only slightly. Bobbie Heisterkamp focuses primarily on Estes Park and Grand Lake, despite that fact that she doesn't live year round in Estes Park or Grand Lake (and really has no connection to Grand Lake, except that she enjoys terrorizing its collector base as well). For this particular view, Bobbie Heisterkamp already owns seven different examples (I know this because Bobbie is quite proud of sharing this information, not with me, but with people who then share it with me). For Bobbie, seven of the same exact thing is not enough. I'm not sure how the eighth adds to the oeuvre, or helps researchers in any way, maybe ask the Estes Park Museum, who placed Bobbie smack on their board a few years back, because she is going to donate her collection to the museum. Some day. Not, of course, when it could be useful to other living historians. Maybe 50 years from now. No need for an intervention when it's just postcards and the "circle your index finger near your head" prices that Bobbie is willing to pay for them, not actual people getting hurt, right?
I hadn't paid much attention to the back of this postcard, the back pictured above, until I was sitting there looking at this listing with two hours left in the auction, wondering how much I was going to have to pay to get my first example of this postcard while keeping Bobbie from getting her eighth. Sitting there, I started to read the name of the recipient, then the name of the sender, then the message. My family has connections to Estes Park. That is why I collect Estes Park. It's how I ended up in Estes Park. I remembered, vaguely, that my grandmother on my mom's side, whose name was Lucille, had a friend in Omaha who taught school with her, and prior to seeing this postcard, I wouldn't have been able to recall that friend's name if you had provided her initials, but with the name right there in big letters on Ebay's "zoom" feature, I said to myself "Wasn't my grandmother's good friend in Omaha named Loretta Cutler?"
Let's get to the important stuff. This postcard was written by my grandmother, who attended the Stock Show with her husband frequently, since they were in an agriculture-related business, and then came up to Estes Park to see their cabin (not to stay in their cabin - It wasn't winterized, and didn't have water or electricity). My mother, who may or may not have been in tow in January 1942 (she would have been 4-3/4 years old at the time), confirmed with one hour left in the auction this was her mother's handwriting. My grandparents lost their Estes Park cabin when the road to the Beaver Meadows entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park was put in. Who knows if Bobbie Heisterkamp's grandparents ever had a cabin in Estes Park, or ever lost a cabin, or ever had something directly connected to her family show up on Ebay? The point is: This postcard is much more significant and important to me, to my family, that it will ever be to Bobbie Heisterkamp and the Estes Park Museum. If you can't agree with that, you either have serious issues of denial, or an overwhelming hatred of me that clouds your capacity to think straight.
Now that we are down far enough in the body of this post for it not to be visible to the casual passer-by, let me tell you what I really think of Bobbie Heisterkamp (and, coincidentally, what many long-term Grand Lake families who also are unable to reclaim their history really think of Bobbie Heisterkamp): She is a parasite, a parasite of the worst kind, because she robs other people's family history right out from under them, sweetly, with her cockeyed grin, under the guise of saving it. Sure, she can always claim "Once it ends up on Ebay, it's fair game" but I'm not sure what that means. Should I have tracked Loretta Cutler until her death, and then hung around at her funeral asking if anyone knew if she saved any postcards my grandmother had mailed to her? If not, should I be allowed, should anyone be allowed, to buy items of significant family history once they appear on Ebay, or should Bobbie Heisterkamp get this particular item and every other historical item related to Estes Park and Grand Lake once it appears, filing it carefully away with her other seven examples, in this case, and including a picture of it in her "I hunt big game" $100 trophy book that goes for $35 now on Ebay if it sells at all, hoping that the Estes Park Museum will someday get enough grant money or taxpayer funds to digitize her 25,000+ postcards (3700 if you don't count the duplicates), front and back, so that perhaps I can someday give my mom and dad a copy of this postcard, maybe on their 75th anniversary, and say, "Mom and Dad, I tried to get the original for you when it first appeared, but there was a woman named Bobbie Heisterkamp who bid so high I would have been forced to sell my car and dip into my retirement account to obtain it for you."?
Bobbie Heisterkamp is a fucking bully. And the funny thing is, most everyone in town loves her, and most everyone in town hates me, despite the fact that I actually live in town, and help folks when they are off in the ditch because they don't know how to drive in snow, and run to assist when a load of lumber falls off the back of somebody's truck because they forgot to put up the endgate. I'm the one who spends money in the Estes Park Safeway, every week, and I'm the one who fills up, every time, at whatever Estes Park gas station I'm closest to when I recognize I'm almost empty. How's that for irony? All you need to be loved in this town is money, spent somewhere else, and a burning desire to fuck with other people's lives and livelihoods because you can. Bra-Va.
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| Postmarked Estes Park Colorado, 15 January 1942 to Miss Loretta Cutler in Omaha, who never married |
So it was a 7-day auction, and, if you don't know Estes Park postcards on Ebay, you don't realize that you can't just enter a bid at any time during the seven days the auction is being conducted and walk away, thinking that if you enter a high-enough maximum, no one is stupid enough to pay $2400 for the sole reason of outbidding you on a postcard.
For Estes Park postcards, because of Bobbie Heisterkamp, your only hope of getting them is to wait until the very last second, and enter a very high bid, an extremely high bid, something you wouldn't ever pay in the real world but are forced to pay because Bobbie Heisterkamp has a sickness, an illness fostered by our local museum, which would be laughable and easily dismissed if Bobbie Heisterkamp wanted one of every postcard ever made (since that is not possible, it would be like saying "I'm going to collect the first edition of every book ever printed), but becomes really bizarre and fetishistic when you realize, in the postcard world, Bobbie Heisterkamp wants or somehow "needs" every single copy of every single postcard ever printed (the equivalent from the publishing world being that she doesn't just want the first edition of every book ever printed, she must have every single copy of every single book ever printed).
Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but only slightly. Bobbie Heisterkamp focuses primarily on Estes Park and Grand Lake, despite that fact that she doesn't live year round in Estes Park or Grand Lake (and really has no connection to Grand Lake, except that she enjoys terrorizing its collector base as well). For this particular view, Bobbie Heisterkamp already owns seven different examples (I know this because Bobbie is quite proud of sharing this information, not with me, but with people who then share it with me). For Bobbie, seven of the same exact thing is not enough. I'm not sure how the eighth adds to the oeuvre, or helps researchers in any way, maybe ask the Estes Park Museum, who placed Bobbie smack on their board a few years back, because she is going to donate her collection to the museum. Some day. Not, of course, when it could be useful to other living historians. Maybe 50 years from now. No need for an intervention when it's just postcards and the "circle your index finger near your head" prices that Bobbie is willing to pay for them, not actual people getting hurt, right?
I hadn't paid much attention to the back of this postcard, the back pictured above, until I was sitting there looking at this listing with two hours left in the auction, wondering how much I was going to have to pay to get my first example of this postcard while keeping Bobbie from getting her eighth. Sitting there, I started to read the name of the recipient, then the name of the sender, then the message. My family has connections to Estes Park. That is why I collect Estes Park. It's how I ended up in Estes Park. I remembered, vaguely, that my grandmother on my mom's side, whose name was Lucille, had a friend in Omaha who taught school with her, and prior to seeing this postcard, I wouldn't have been able to recall that friend's name if you had provided her initials, but with the name right there in big letters on Ebay's "zoom" feature, I said to myself "Wasn't my grandmother's good friend in Omaha named Loretta Cutler?"
Let's get to the important stuff. This postcard was written by my grandmother, who attended the Stock Show with her husband frequently, since they were in an agriculture-related business, and then came up to Estes Park to see their cabin (not to stay in their cabin - It wasn't winterized, and didn't have water or electricity). My mother, who may or may not have been in tow in January 1942 (she would have been 4-3/4 years old at the time), confirmed with one hour left in the auction this was her mother's handwriting. My grandparents lost their Estes Park cabin when the road to the Beaver Meadows entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park was put in. Who knows if Bobbie Heisterkamp's grandparents ever had a cabin in Estes Park, or ever lost a cabin, or ever had something directly connected to her family show up on Ebay? The point is: This postcard is much more significant and important to me, to my family, that it will ever be to Bobbie Heisterkamp and the Estes Park Museum. If you can't agree with that, you either have serious issues of denial, or an overwhelming hatred of me that clouds your capacity to think straight.
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| The front of the postcard under discussion, as pictured in Bobbie Heisterkamp's book. To my knowledge, she never borrowed postcards from other collections for her book - All the postcards pictured in her book are postcards she owns |
Bobbie Heisterkamp is a fucking bully. And the funny thing is, most everyone in town loves her, and most everyone in town hates me, despite the fact that I actually live in town, and help folks when they are off in the ditch because they don't know how to drive in snow, and run to assist when a load of lumber falls off the back of somebody's truck because they forgot to put up the endgate. I'm the one who spends money in the Estes Park Safeway, every week, and I'm the one who fills up, every time, at whatever Estes Park gas station I'm closest to when I recognize I'm almost empty. How's that for irony? All you need to be loved in this town is money, spent somewhere else, and a burning desire to fuck with other people's lives and livelihoods because you can. Bra-Va.
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