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”.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
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.
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.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
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 or regular hang out spots seems to have been pretty universal.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
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.
KittenBiscuits@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
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.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, location is key to that sentence. Jews in the 1930s in Germany had a very…different experience.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Image