Henrietta Hay's Column

Public transportation. The words can mean anything from the London Underground to the cog road up Pikes Peak.

One wonders how the cave man survived without an easy means of getting from the cave to the hunting ground with minimum effort; guess that explains why he invented the wheel. Our modern world is obsessed with getting people from point A to point B at maximum speed.

One of the least glamorous memories of my youth is the time I spent on number 3 streetcars in Denver. My trips started at the Englewood loop right in front of my dad's lumberyard. Those big yellow cars clanged their way down Broadway to Colfax, onto 15th street and down to the Tramway barn. They stopped at every block and took at least a half hour for the trip. There were, of course, many other routes, but that big number 3 is the only one I remember.

When my mother hauled me "downtown" (that meant shopping which I hated or eating which I loved) I had to climb up the steps at the middle of the car. A conductor presided over a box into which I stuck my nickel or dime or whatever the fare was. To the right was a door enclosing the front half of the car. That half was heated - sort of. The back half was open to the weather. Whatever the season, my mother always insisted on sitting in the front half, which was stuffy and smelly and usually crowded, and may have contributed to my dislike of flying today.

By the time I was old enough to go alone, on larger fully enclosed cars came into use and the fare probably increased to 15 cents. The new cars were still yellow and still sported that big number 3. They looked a little like giant yellow caterpillars

The best thing about those streetcars was the fact they stopped in front of the lumberyard. While the motorman was having his break we lined up bottle caps on the rails. After the cars ran over them we had nice flat, round disks. I have absolutely no idea what we used them for, but I am sure they were Valuable.

Like most early tramway systems, Denver's started off with horsepower, literally. By the time my family got there, the horses had been put out to pasture and the cars were powered by electricity. Little wheels, called trolleys, were mounted on metal poles on top of the cars, and rolled along the electrified lines overhead. Shades of the Toonerville trolley!

Grand Junction had its streetcars too, although I never saw them. Like Denver's, ours started with horsepower, Charlie and Chester. Charlie, a bony white horse, became quite famous because he got his picture taken for posterity and it is in all the history books. That two-car/two horse line ran from 1890 until Charlie gave out and was retired.

In 1909 electricity came to the local streetcar system. When the first car finally ran down Main Street, a flowery Sentinel editorial noted the event with, "All Hail the Day." The city streetcars lasted until 1926, when they died a natural death of not enough use.

I find that Grand Junction native Bill Ela and I had similar hobbies as kids. As a little boy he used to put nails on the track in front of his house, so where I had flat bottle caps he had flat nails. He claims that his were more useful; they made knives Bill doesn't remember ever riding on one of the streetcars, but he does remember some teenagers who shall be nameless riding the rails. They drove a car down the tracks one day and the tires slipped inside the tracks and got wedged tight. Fortunately, the streetcars didn't run very often and they had plenty of time to jack up the car and get it out. After all, streetcar tracks are for the entertainment of the young.

Public transportation today is a far cry from good old Number 3 and the streetcars in Grand Junction. But those systems did the job. As a matter of fact, there are local citizens who would probably welcome a horsecar.