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for her nieces and nephews. At a time when my life's ambition
was to become a street car conductor, my parents allowed me to go on a
trolley excursion and Aunt Celin consented to go with
me. I planned the trip well in advance, using time-tables from a
rack outside the Hotel Vendome barbershop where I always had my hair
cut. As our trip was limited to a single day, we took a triangular
course with Wayland, Worcester and Fitchburg the vertices.
The trip from Natick to Worcester was old hat — I had done it
before — but the trip from Worcester to Fitchburg was a new
and thrilling experience, especially in the hills outside of Sterling
where, after a labored ascent, the motorman would turn the car loose and
let her go cavorting down hill a mile a minute — rattling, swaying, and
roaring along the tracks. This, and the shrill whistle that he blew at
intervals, added greatly to the excitement and I decided I no longer
wanted to be a conductor but a motorman. Many times I envisioned myself
breaking speed records on those hills !
We decided to eat our picnic lunch in an abandoned pasture
near Leominster. It was strewn with boulders and overgrown
with scrub oak and birches four or five feet high. The sun was warm but
a gentle breeze made the day comfortable and dis-couraged insects.
"You've wet your trousers," Aunt Celin observed, as we went through
a gap in the stonewall. "You can't go on the car like
that." Then she hung my lower garments to dry on one of the
scrub trees.
A combination of sun and wind soon erased all evidence of
the mishap, and as we walked down to the street car stop three |
