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”.
hop on a donkey, slap its ass, get lost in a forest, get eaten by a bear.
eeeazeeeee…
In school. We used to plan where we want to go on certain date and time and just meet there. Admittedly this was still a time with a landline and payphones and my part of the world was just getting cellphones but that’s for middle to upper class.
Other people have touched on it, but I really want to emphasize how completely ordinary it used to be to go to someone’s house uninvited, unannounced. Well into the telephone age, it was regularly done. And you were expected to always invite them in.
If you wanted to appear to be an at least minimally functional member of society, you would keep some sort of snack food, a cake, cookies, scones, muffins, et cetera, constantly in stock so that you could offer refreshments to literally any person anyone in your household had ever met in their lives, showing up at your door at absolutely any time.
Refreshments were the bare minimum. The further back you go, the more likely your guests were going to want to live with you for a while.
Recently got a friend into anime and he was complaining how unrealistic it was for a unannouced guest to just be invited in, given a spare bedroom and given food and drink no questions asked basically.
To be fair while it was a shit isakai and very nonsense. This bit of it was an extremely accurate depiction.
We were having a fun time picking apart the nonsense of a low effort shit show. But was just funny that out of everything the only thing they got remotely accurate was the hosting manners.
Before landlines, you’d write them a letter to arrange a meeting.
The mail was delivered up to 4 times a day depending on where you lived.
And since only one family member (generally the father) had to work to support the family, there was almost always someone home.
So another option would be to simply visit them unannounced at a time you knew they’d be there.
In many regions, it would have been normal to simply walk in to a friend’s house, even without knocking.
Also, you’d know this person from somewhere. Somewhere you met.
Either at work, or at a club, or a union meeting, or a pub. You get the idea.
So you’d see them regularly in person, cause otherwise you wouldn’t get to know them in the first place.My grandparents told me stories of how they’d have regular times and places. My grandpa told me stories of meeting up with his boys on Saturday mornings at the synagogue, and then going out and about. They’d sometimes park cars for folks, and sometimes take them on unauthorized joy rides. Occasionally folks would borrow a car that no one asked them to park, since apparently I guess folks left keys in cars regularly.
This was in Pittsburgh, and from what I gather captures the experience of the life of a Jewish teenager in the twenties and thirties pretty well.
There was a lot of hanging out on street corners and stoops, and just looking for friends at their regular candy shop/soda joint/pool hall, etc.
It sounds fuckin’ wild, tbh. My grandma says she’d take the bus across town in high school to meet up with her boyfriend and I was like, ‘Was that at all seen as daring or risky? For a young unaccompanied woman to be out like that?’ Apparently not. Folks could really hang.
I don’t know how this relates outside of specific cultures, though. Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X gave me the sense that a lot of experiences were different depending on race, but just rolling up to your friends’ houses, places of work, or regular hangout spots seems to have been pretty universal.
Btw, PSA: Grandparents are a treasure. If you have any, call them today and ask them what they liked to do on a Saturday when they were 17. It was probably pretty dope.
That was still universal when I was a teenager in the 90s in Germany.
My best friend would just come over, ask if I’m home, and leave again or go look for me in the common places if I wasn’t.
It was awesome, and the loss of that world is something that still hurts.Where were the common places?
Growing up it wasn’t uncommon for me to go to friend As house unannouced just walk in and find his mom in the backyard ask if flmy friend was there, she would say no. I would go 7 blocks away to friend B do the same thing find his dad in the garage and he say that friend B left an hour ago.
So I would walk 30 mins to the park and see friend D ask them if they seen friend A, they would say no. So I would go to the woods 20 mins away and friend friend A and B just hanging out then spend the next few hours chilling before running home cause the street lights came on.
Mom and dad would be out searching the same way I did for my little brother cause he went to friend A, then they went to B then D then the park. And none of them told their parents.
My dad would just track my brother’s friend group via where they left their bikes or random things in front lawns. So you could track the neighborhood kids that way.
So I would be home alone for an hour or so after dark before Dad and Mom pulled in with my brother and likely 3 other kids who would then stay the night.
Mom would then make dinner for everyone. I would eat the. Leave to back to friend A cause we agreed I would stay over and their parents would take me to school the next day since they left for work after school started instead of before.
So I would then just walk in the dark to my friend’s house
This was middle school for me. I would routinely cover 15+ miles a day back and forth all over the neighborhoods in a single day.
In summer, the local playground, the basketball courts, the lake, or our secret place in the woods where we hid our porn magazines and fought our airsoft battles.
In winter, the video game store where you could play for free to “try them out”, another friend’s place, or my dad’s garage where we tried to build a bungee strap crossbow that shot Bic lighters.That vacant lot. The one in the summer where we used to smoke pot.
Café, other friends place.
Lol, when he was 17, my papaw was transporting moonshine for his uncle.
My other grandfather was spending weekends driving over to Harlan to go to the movies.
This was in Pittsburgh, and from what I gather captures the experience of the life of a Jewish teenager in the twenties and thirties pretty well.
Yeah, location is key to that sentence. Jews in the 1930s in Germany had a very…different experience.
Also, you’ve probably heard of a “calling card,” but these were actual physical things. If you dropped by someone’s home or business when they weren’t there, you could leave behind a card saying you were there and wanted to get in touch.
I feel like those were the days where you could have true friendships in society, not “having friends to send memes”.
Um, excuse me? You need to get out of your internet bubble. Tons of people still have friends in real life - most of them, actually. If you don’t, and you wish you did, then you have an unusual problem and you should start working on solving it asap
Your message might be correct (maybe) but the way you wrote it could not be wronger.
For starters, it’s not an unusual problem at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic?wprov=sfla1
Secondly, your whole comment is really aggressive, from “Um, excuse me?” to “you should work on it asap” it’s all just attacks as if it’s as simple as that.
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.
Letters weren’t only for cross-continental communication.
Before electronic communication you’d send a letter or just show up unannounced.
And you left a “calling card” if you really need/want to talk.
Yes! My grandfather (the movies one from my other comment, not the moonshiner) was still leaving his business cards on people’s doors in the 90s when I’d ride around with him trying to collect payments on our customers’ accounts.
There’s also telegraphs, but I’m not sure if casual friends could use it, I don’t think telegraphs ever reached the masses?
You’d send telegrams via telegraph by going to a business that offered the service. The business on the other end would either deliver it, or have the post office do it.
But no, telegraphs weren’t something the average person owned.
You could also just pay a neighbor kid a few cents to run the message for you.
Iv done that one! On my walk home in the 8th grade there was this really nice old lady who would flag down random school kids to deliver envelopes all over the place. Would give you 5 bucks to do it!
She would also let you see her tits if she was drunk enough.
Found out years later it was a whore house, but the old lady who ran it was really nice to everyone routinely would let you sit in her patio if it was raining or snowing really hard and warm up. You weren’t allowed inside proper for obvious reasons.
And she was always a good one to go to if you needed some extra cash and were willing to work, mowing lawns running letters or going and buying groceries for her.
Never met anyone who disliked her. She also had the only nice property on the street. Everything was always clean and tidy.
Wild to think back how normal everyone just considered it.
Depends on where you lived.
In some places, you’d leave a note with someone you knew the recipient was going to see that day. In some places, note passing was quite an artform, including special paper folding to protect the contents from prying eyes.
In Paris, they had the tubes — the entire city was plumbed with vacuum tubes, and you could write a note or even pack a small object into a capsule with an address, drop it in your local receptacle, and it would zip across town in minutes to the recipient address.
In other places, markings on trees, mirrors, flags, smoke signals and various musical instruments and bells have been used.
If this is about that period of human history where we had long-distance transportation (ie railroads) but didn’t yet have mass communication infrastructure that isn’t the postal service – so 1830s to 1860s – then I think the answer is to just plan to meet the other person at a certain place every month.
To use modern parlance, put a recurring meeting on their calendar.
If you’re going that far back means those two friends in the same city were probably going to church (or some other religious gathering) fairly regularly and would likely see each other fairly often. Enough to be able to make other plans during the week. And yes, can’t tell someone you’re running late or not showing up… if you’re late you’re late, if you don’t appear then that’ll be a conversation next time at church.
Beyond that since they’re in the same city those friends likely go to the same pub(s) or other places and see each other that way.
Sending letters via post to friends in the same city wasn’t uncommon—but beyond that, you could leave messages at common locations. Like if you both go to the same shop once a week, you could leave messages for each other with the shopkeeper.
You’d show up at their house earlier that day to say, I’m going to be at X place at Y time, I hope you can join me?
You just got to take chances and hope the person you’re meeting is where you’ll end up meeting them in. Also, random chance happenings.
Go out earlier is a practice that I think it is not done anymore. If I have a meeting at 4pm and I know that it takes me 30 minutes to get there, I go out of my house one hour before. This is for answer your doubt about how would you let know to your friend that you will be late, you weren’t able, the best you can do is be preventative.
Imagine you send a letter to a fellow who lives overseas, you expect to see him september the 3rd in a concrete place. I can bet that person would arrive like a month before and wait the right time. (Obviuosly would not wait for you in that very place, that person can stay in a hotel or whatever).
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.
