The Streetcar Blues
A local editor skewers a poet's romanticized version of riding Tacoma's crowded, unreliable trolley cars.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Lillian H. Ward, a singer from Buffalo, has found rhythm in a trolley car, and if she has not taken out an asbestos poet's license, the authorities are lax in their duty. In her latest poem, she writes of the trolley car 'bumping and swaying' and 'even gliding.' What kind of stuff is this? The car didn't stop because it was marked 'barn only,' and seven cars that preceded it were loaded to the limit while conductors laughed at victims of corporation greed who stood shivering in the rain. There never was a rollicking roll around a corner. Miss Ward knows, if she knows anything, that when the car struck the curve, twenty-seven strap-hangers were thrown into a confused heap, and the curses put on the motorman should go ringing down through the ages. If the trolley could hold itself, it would write a story of misery longer than a fourteen-dollar installment-house dictionary, and write the testimony in blood.
“If the trolley could hold itself, it would write a story of misery longer than a fourteen-dollar installment-house dictionary, and write the testimony in blood.”
This critique captures a classic urban tension: the gap between corporate marketing—selling a 'soothing' commute—and the lived reality of failing, overcrowded public infrastructure. Over a century later, Tacoma commuters still grapple with the reliability and comfort of the transit systems meant to move them through the city.
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