Miss Ida Bidwell lived in Prairie City, a small city in Jasper County of central Iowa.
The first settlement in this area grew up around a tavern.
The city was established when the railroad arrived in 1866.
Prairie City is 22 miles east of Des Moines and had a population between 700 -800 in 1907.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_City,_Iowa
In April of 1907, Ida received a postcard from an unidentified friend in Des Moines.
Des Moines, the capital and largest city in Iowa, was incorporated in 1851 as “Fort Des Moines”.
The city takes its name from the Des Moines River which flows through (and occasionally floods) the city.
At the time Ida received the postcard, Des Moines was an important railroad hub.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Moines,_Iowa
The face of the postcard is an interesting bit of original art -it appears to be a woodblock print.
A young man, his shirt sleeves rolled up, paddles a canoe in which a young woman reclines on a cushioned seat.
Simple lines indicate tree-covered hills in the distance and leafy foliage overhead.
The red canoe is the only color applied to the black and white block.
Beside the placid, romantic scene is a printed question:
“Can ‘oo’ take a trip with me”
The substitution of “oo” for “you” provides the forced homophone of “canoe”.
Although new postal regulations permitted a message on the reverse, the postcard was printed before the “divided back” was enacted.
Beneath the printed question on the face, the sender has written, “Meet me at the crossing. Ta. Ta.”
(To show the simple beauty of the design, I have digitally removed the written inscription on one image of the postcard – the original is uploaded below.)
I believe that the “crossing” is the trolley stop where a bridge crossed the Raccoon River east of Des Moines.
This would have been between Des Moines and Prairie City, closer to Des Moines.
(There are on-line forums devoted to the history of the extensive street car system linking Des Moines to nearby communities.)
One hopes that Miss Bidwell met her mysterious friend and that the two enjoyed romantic success in the 20th century.
