First let me ask, who remembers trackless trolleys? If you called them trolleybuses, then you werent from Manayunk. No tracks but an overhead electrical connection. They were discontinued in the early 1960s so I never rode the 61 to school when it was a trackless trolley. Let me not dwell on the trackless trolley but instead talk about the E bus and why I dont smoke. Im thinking 1961... maybe 1962 and Im thinking the crew was Mike Stimmler, Joe Murray, Joe Kelly, and me. Before we ever had our drivers licenses, PTC (forerunner to SEPTA with green and cream buses) still crossed our community with the A, the A Express, the E, the R, the Z, and the 61. Adventure was hopping on one of these bad boys just to see where we ended up at the end of the line. Our parents tried scaring us off such projects by telling us that bad guys will stab you in the leg with a needle thatll put you to sleep and... I dont know of any parent who ever finished the story but Im sure it was somewhere in the area of Texas Chain Saw and John Wayne Gacy or if you got off light, maybe they just stole a kidney and left you in a tub of ice at the Bellevue-Stratford. Parents knew the unknown was scarier than any definitive ending on any story ever. But we were guys sworn to exploring the unknown and wed kick butt as 12 year olds because we all had pen knives and we wouldnt hesitate to use them against the bad guys. So for a quarter a piece (transfers were free), we hopped on the E at Ridge and Walnut heading off to Morocco or Mars... didnt much matter. We saw the Presidential, then Channel 10 where they filmed Action in the Afternoon on the side lot, St. Joes College, a peek of the Seminary then out 63rd Stereet down Lansdowne Ave, past Cobbs Creek, and into 69th Street. It was a strange new world as we debarked from our vessel! Once inside the terminal, we played some pin ball games and bought cigars... the longer the better. Smoked them while we walked around in our desert boots and whalers. Smoked them on the bus on the way back home. Smoked them almost all the way home... in the hands of a 12 year old, a 10 inch cigar lasts a long time! I probably looked green as I said,gnight and my parents nodded, knowing that Id learned an important lesson that evening. I knelt at the altar of the porcelain goddess and hugged her for a good long while. I couldnt find a picture of the 61 as a trackless trolley but that IS the Wild West according to Action in the Afternoon. And thats why Im not a smoker.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:30:07 +0000
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