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”.
My parents lived in a part of the world where they didn’t always have phones. Dad lived on a farm, mom lived in town. School together, Church together. After school, Dad would go “help around the house” at mom’s. Or vice versa. Once they got old enough, one or the other would go to the city in the family car for shopping, and bring the other with. Go see a movie, grab a bite to eat together.