Like, you aren’t necessarily next door neighbors. You’d have to take the streetcar or bus or commuter rail some distance to go meet your friend. You can’t text “sorry the train is 30 minutes late”, because no cell phones, no internet, no tracking buses or trains on your smartphone. No payphones or landlines.
Letters are only for those cross-continental, cross-oceanic relationships. If you live in the same city, then well you’d still have to meet in person cuz it’s not the digital age, no doomscrolling social media and sending texts and memes.
I feel like those were the days where you could have true friendships in society, not “having friends to send memes”.
Just arranging it the last time in person. Mail worked just fine to confirm or cancel a bit before since the same city. If you needed things more quickly, couriers was one way. There were also a lot third spaces and people met out and about more and more often. They might see each other every Sunday at the same church for instance.
Up until I was in uni, even payphones didn’t matter most of the time since there’s no guarantee both parties are going to be near one and no normal person had a pager. If you were going to a business that had a phone, you could look up their number and call them to put one of your buddies on the line or at least send a message (see the running gag on the Simpsons where Bart calls the bar to ask for someone).
We also just waited a bit and if they didn’t show, we went on with our plans.