and the old Interuban Line
May 27, 2009 (Wednesday)
When I was a boy, I used to ride the streetcars in Houston with my grandfather. We boarded the electric transportation vehicle at Jensen Drive and Quitman, the end of the line by the drugstore that featured the old-time soda fountain with the round marble-top tables and chairs with wrought iron backs. I was treated to quinine in square brown bottles from that drugstore whenever I was sick. I didn’t mind it much, because it was chocolate flavored, and I ignored the bitterness for the joy of tasting the chocolate.
The streetcars provided an excellent, roomy and dependable form of transportation. They ran on electricity in wires above the tracks, connected to the streetcar by a movable arm. The biggest noise it made was the sound of the steel wheels on the tracks, located on the same right of way as the street. Cars drove over the tracks with no trouble, since they sat at roadway level. They looked nothing like the modern metro system, and only one car at a time carried passengers. In time, they were replaced with buses run by internal combustion engines. For the most part, the buses followed the original routes of the streetcars, at least at first. Dallas replaced many of their electric streetcars with electric buses, utilizing the same electric lines for power, but I don’t recall any of those in Houston. The changeover occured generally about the time of the Second World War.
When I was a teenager, my mother and stepfather bought a restaurant on Milby directly across the street from the main bus terminal. Our customers were mostly bus drivers and administrative and office persons. Nearly every bus driver had his own way of drinking coffee, using the saucer as well as the cup, a habit cultivated from quick stops on the routes. The cafe was open twenty-four hours a day, because the drivers worked those hours. My parents eventually had three restaurants, and my sisters and I worked in each of them from time to time. There was no such thing as fast food outlets at the time. I rarely see an old fashioned diner, but whenever I do, I think of those days.
There are some interesting articles on the internet, with lots of pictures, about the old streetcars and the Houston-Galveston Interurban line. You can view them by clicking here.
_____________________________________________________________________
Click here for related Google images (streetcars, etc)
