Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-02-23
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

Since our childhood days, when we
| had ambitions to be q motorman or
conductor, these gentlemen have inter-
eSted us.
Today small boys want to be aviators,
or at least they think they do. You see
them every afternoon at 8 o'clock, pour
ing out of the grade schools with black
leather helmets and goggles.
Years before Lindbergh appeared
upon the horizon of youth. however,
the street Car motorman, with his COM
mapding position at the head of the
largest vehicle on the streets, and his
resounding, changing bell, was the hero
of smallboydom.
Surely he was and is a picturesque
figure. No doubt there is many an
elderly motorman, white muSt&he
and all, who gets quite kick" as we
say nowadays, from his premier posi-
ton in the traffic flow
1t Is something, now, to have such a
vehicle under ones fingers, to thread
| ones way along the tracks, to go
through crowds, to put on the brakes
to avoid running over that old lady, to
come to the barn, to greet ones fellows,
to put out to see again, ETC., etc.
Especially the "etc" There must be
great deal of the etc" in the life of
motorman which no small boy, how
ever admiring, ever had any idea of. or
which few adults who have not worked
at the controls have any real concep-
ton Of, either
The small boys of yesteryear swcre
such allegiance to him that now they
are grown up and have become bankers.
and clerks. and writer's, and ayiators'
and soldiers, and florists and almost
everything else, they still keep a warm
place in their minds and hearts for the
man VINO peers out the front glass of
the street cars.
Back in the COS, and for some time
thereafter, slnotJrmen stood Oh WING
swept, unhGated platforms Possibly
their exposed position was a part of the
general snobbery of the day. Gradually
the cars took on more humanitarian
shape. and the motorman was invited
in off the platform. or, rather. the
platform was incorporated in the In
closed car itself
The conductors place has been more
Sc ,ure. Always he has had access to
the heated body of the vehicle even in
the days when he, too, had to stand on
an exposed platform at the rear. The
advent Of the pay-as-you-enter types of
cars, with their swinging doors put the
conductor permanently behind his STAN
chlon, or whatever one calls the affair
he stands by
In the old days. as we recall them.
the mOtorman was the hero with the
small boys. Traffic lights and other
1mpediments had not arisen to take
away from his major role in the streets.
When the big car ground its way down
the Avenue, with Jim Donohue stepping
on the bell to inform Thomas Miller,
driving bread wagon q block away,
that he was in some danger of being
run over, there was not a small boy in
washington, d. c., who did not envy
Jim, motorman.
Just how many boys grew I'D to be
motormen there is no way of telling
We always have wondered if boys who
actually turned into motormen ever
dreamed about being such Maybe they
did. But with the average boy, the
craze came into being at about 8 or 8
years of age and vanished forever at 10
or ii years old. Perhaps only boys des-
tined by fate to become motormen
kept the dream beyond the years mem
toned.
Since those days, those of us who
have been faithful to the public utili-
ties, with possible lapses into motor
dom, and unblushing transfers of af-
lection TO motor buses, have found our
contacts with motormen and conduc-
tors often marred by acts which re-
suited in more or less mental friction.
After We have done that astounding
and somewhat peculiar thing known as
growing up" although just exactly