Streetcars, 1930s, by Carter Jefferson

From MemoryArchive

Who: Carter Jefferson 
What: Streetcars
When: 1930's
Where: Dallas, Texas

Streetcars

by Carter Jefferson

Thanks to the automobile manufacturers, few residents of the United States today know that before World War II most people travelled all over their cities comfortably without polluting much of anything. The vast majority of them didn't even own automobiles. We walked a little more, but nobody could have imagined the kind of traffic snarls that exist today. When we wanted to go somewhere that was too far to walk, we "took the streetcar." Are we better off now?

Back in the 1930s, there were no suburbs, in the modern sense of the word, in small cities; there were what we called "residential areas," which usually meant a few blocks of houses with only a small grocery store and a pharmacy in the neigborhood. Most people travelled "to town," or to other neighborhoods, on trolley cars, which in Dallas were never called trollies but always called streetcars. Fare was three cents for kids under twelve, seven cents for adults. (You could buy a pretty good new Chevrolet for $500, which very few people had to spare.) When we really disliked somebody, we used to say we hoped they'd go someplace it would take $40 carfare to get back from. Most of us assumed that would probably be China.

To get around the city, it was necessary to change from one line to another. In order to avoid paying two fares, one got a transfer, a printed and punched strip of paper about six inches by two inches, which was available from the motorman, who controlled the progress of the car over the tracks. He sat on a high chair at the front of the car, and varied his speed by moving back and forth through an arc a short, horizontal lever with a knob on it.

Children travelled alone on streetcars all the time. I took the Ervay Street car from Colonial Avenue and Pine Street, about two blocks from my house, to downtown every Saturday from the time I was about nine, in 1936, until I was thirteen--I had to go to the Medical Arts Building to get the braces on my teeth adjusted. Every Saturday, as I started out the door, my mother would say, "Have you got carfare?" I would reply, "Yes-s-s-s, Mother," disgusted that she thought I was so stupid as to go without it. I always had an extra nickel, too, to buy a coverless copy of Amazing Stories at a used book shop on Elm Street.

One of the major highlights of each week was the Saturday afternoon movie at the Forest Theater, on Forest at Colonial Avenue. Admission was a nickel, for which we got to see a double bill (a good movie and a "B" movie), a serial (usually had thirteen installments, one each Saturday), and five Popeye cartoons. For a while, we were also given a can of spinach to take home, which our parents were glad to get. So, including carfare, this cost each of us eleven cents. Without the streetcar, we couldn't have gone--it was too far for people our age to walk, especially when it was too hot or too cold (one or the other, most of the time).

Getting on the wrong car was a continuing fear, even for one of my vast experience. One Saturday I took Billy Tankersley, a kid a couple of years younger than I was who lived down the block, to the movie with me. He was too young to go by himself. When we came out after the movie it was dusk. We wandered over to the corner and, when a car came, we got on. That Saturday the feature film was The Werewolf of London, and it was scary--it would probably still scare me today.

Instead of proceeding down Colonial Avenue, as the Ervay car always did, the car went straight down Forest Avenue. I immediately realized we had accidentally gotten on the Myrtle Street car; unfortunately, so did Billy, who let out a yell you could hear at Fair Park, a couple of miles away, and started crying inconsolably. I tried to comfort him, at the same time explaining to the motorman what had happened. He gave me two transfers, which saved our lives--neither of us had any money left. By the time we got off and walked back to Colonial and Forest, Billy was okay. We got on the Ervay car and got home with no further difficulty. Kids made this kind of mistake a lot, and the little ones always yelled, even if they were with their mothers.

Boys a little older, however, got a big kick out of pulling the trolleys off the wires at Halloween. The trolley, a wheel on a long bar that went from the top of the car to the wire that ran down the middle of the street, was controlled by a cable that hung down the back of the car and was fastened to a spring in a round box. If you ran up to the back of the car just as it was beginning to move, you could grab the wire, give it a jerk, and pull the wheel off the wire. Sometimes you'd even get to see sparks. Then the car would roll majestically to a stop, the motorman would get out, saying unkind things about little boys, and hook the trolley back on. Then he could walk back to the front of the car, climb up the two metal steps, and get behind the controls again. He would start off, and, of course, we'd pull the trolley off again. We'd run off behind a bush and laugh like hell. Some of us laughed so hard we rolled on the ground. We never did it more than twice to the same car. This was very good fun.

When World II came, women started working in the factories. On the streetcars, headed for work or coming home, they wore slacks. Some carried black tin lunch boxes, just the way many of the men did. They often wore "snoods," a kind of net made of pretty colored elastic that kept their hair from blowing around. They looked strange, but we got used it. Until that time, women wore dresses, period.

Sometime in 1942 we began to see crippled veterans riding the streetcars. Some of them had a hard time getting on, but they'd clamber up some way--usually someone would help, and then whoever was sitting near the front would get up and give the guy a seat. Then we'd stare at him. After a while, wounded men were so common we stopped staring.

Looking back, I wonder if motormen were exempt from the draft. God knows their occupation was essential. Anyhow, some way the cars kept running. They were a vital part of what we called "the war effort." Had we not had them, how could all those people have gotten to work at the Ford plant, where they made the tanks and artillery that won the war?

A few years ago I went to the Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine. They have a lot of really weird streetcars, but parked off kind of by itself, in some long grass, I saw--my God!--a Myrtle street car. It made me think of Billy.

Automobiles have a lot going for them, but are we really better off, chaufferring our kids all over the place, spending hours sitting in traffic, and chancing asphyxiation by diesel fumes every time a bus goes by? I wonder.