Miss Leeanna Truxell lived in Mount Pleasant, a borough 45 miles southwest of Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania.

Between 1910 and 1920, the area was a center of glass-making, and dotted with coke furnaces.  

Today, the borough has fewer citizens than it boasted in 1916.

In December of 1916, Leeanna received a colorful postcard from her friend, John Dunn.

John lived in Scottdale, the center of the Frick coke empire, about 32 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

John’s postcard bore the hand-colored photograph of two ballroom dancers in a tight clinch.

The legend proclaims, ‘Life is a big dance”.

On the reverse, John suggests that, if Leeanna is “coming downtown” on Saturday night, he will meet her in the waiting room at7:15.

The reference is, surely, to the railroad systems that connected all the industrial towns of the region.

We could be envious of the extensive system of cheap public transportation that existed at the time.

(I found an additional postcard sent to LeeAnna, but John did not appear in it.)

One hopes that the youth were able to fulfill their plans and that they enjoyed heartily the winter of 1916-1917.