Word: trolley
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...despair, Granddad. As of right now, from Maine to California, the lit tle blister can be scooped up and taken out to any one of more than a dozen trolley museums. He can see the long, spring-mounted pole that held the round grooved wheel ^That's the trolley") against the overhead electric wire. He can see where the motorman stood, his foot on the button that rang the bell ("One clang for stopping, two for starting"). He will also learn, if he listens, that by 1918 the bobbed-hair and spats set had their pick of some...
...Biddeford. Today, only eight cities in the U.S. and Canada still have Toonervilles* clang-clanging through the streets. But in odd meadows and on discarded old cross-country rails, U.S. trolley buffs have put some 300 relics back into mint condition and occasional service. The revival started in Maine back in 1939. For old times' sake, three Bostonians rode up to Biddeford one Fourth of July to be aboard the last run of the Biddeford & Saco Street Railroad's Car 31. At the end of the line, they spontaneously passed the hat among the passengers, added enough...
...seem to like this new acquisition, though as one said, "It looks like an exploding artichoke." Other wits want to turn it into a giant electromagnet. The university intends to keep a careful eye out for pranksters: the student body is famed for its technological wizardry, once welded a trolley to its tracks while it picked up passengers. The ironworkers who put up the Calder had a more practical approach. Said one: "It's no different than putting up a boiler. We like...
...Last Trolley Ride, though longer, is hardly more substantial. In upstate New York, the orphaned sisters Lottie and Emily Pardee fry fritters in the bay window of their home. The sizzle attracts Jim Eck, who was born on a canal barge, and Jim's "war buddy," Jim Morgan. After a last ride on the trolley line, which is being shut down, these four marry. The trolley line is kept running in miniature in somebody's basement, and subsequently it is sent to the Smithsonian Institution...
Calisher plots, obviously, do not readily synopsize-like boiled water, they leave no residue. But the reader can enjoy a Calisher journey even though, like her trolley line, it ends up nowhere. The Calisher ear for words is poetical, and sometimes the click of wheel on track forms recognizable rhythms: "The spirit of picnics and cemetery visits is always feminine...