Why would someone steal a streetcar? Um, because it’s there?
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Version 0 of 1. Larry Kenney will never forget the day someone stole his streetcar. It was Oct. 27, 1957, and Larry, a driver with D.C. Transit, had hopped out of the streetcar just long enough to get a cup of coffee at a little greasy spoon near Barney Circle in Southeast Washington. It was getting on 1 a.m., and Larry was fortifying himself for the last run of his shift, driving the No. 30 streetcar back to the barn in Friendship Heights. He hadn’t even received his coffee when somebody came in and said, “Somebody’s fooling around on your streetcar.” By the time Larry ran outside, the streetcar was taking off without him. What was going through your head, Larry? “I’m in big trouble,” Larry said. “No one had ever lost a streetcar before. They’d lost buses. They’d never lost a streetcar.” I met Larry at a sandwich shop in Wheaton, Md. He lives not too far away, in Silver Spring. He’s 81. A lot of people know him as Larry the Stump Man. He grinds stumps. When his streetcar was stolen, Larry was 23 and had been driving streetcars for a couple of years. He’d started with D.C. Transit in the traffic and scheduling department, where his job was counting passengers along the route. When Larry trained on the trolleys, this is what he was told: Never leave your streetcar without taking out the reverse bar. The reverse bar was a metal shaft that went in a slot on the floor. Push it one way and the streetcar could go forward. Pull it the other and — as the name implied — you could reverse the streetcar. It’s likely that before Oct. 27, 1957, no driver had ever actually taken the reverse bar with him when exiting a trolley. The idea that someone would steal a streetcar was too farfetched. Larry knew he’d never catch his streetcar — police estimated that it quickly got up to 60 mph — so he went to a company telephone near Barney Circle and called Central Dispatch. The streetcar rocketed around Barney Circle and headed west on Pennsylvania Avenue. It clipped two cars at 15th Street SE, sending them spinning, and sped toward the Capitol. At Independence Avenue, it jumped the tracks, rammed a station wagon and came to a halt opposite the Library of Congress. It had traveled 15 blocks and struck seven cars. The thief jumped from the streetcar and bolted, but he was quickly captured by police. “I ought to go out to National Airport,” said the joyrider, Clayton Morgan Jr., 40. “It looks like I’d make a better jet pilot than a trolley driver.” At his trial, Morgan was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and he ended up at St. Elizabeths. Larry figured his own streetcar-driving days were over. He was called into the office of a man named Thomas Trimmer. “He was the guy who meted out discipline. He wasn’t very well liked.” But Trimmer let Larry stay. “I thought it was awful decent of him,” he said. Larry drove streetcars for a few more years and then switched to buses. “I could see the handwriting on the wall,” he said. Streetcars were on the way out. When Metro took over, Larry stayed. He drove subway trains, too, and retired from Metro in 1995. I asked him what he thought about the (possible) return of D.C. streetcars. “Don’t ask me to drive ’em,” he said. The roads are too crowded these days. “Everybody didn’t own a car in the ’50s, and they still had a lot of accidents,” Larry said. Cars and streetcars collided regularly, usually by accident, though sometimes seemingly on purpose. “I was going out Florida Avenue and was going to make a right-hand turn on 18th Street, and this fella in an old beat-up pickup truck came over and rubbed along the side of the streetcar. He got out of the truck and told me: ‘I’m gonna get a brand new truck out of this. O. Roy Chalk is gonna pay out the nose.’ ” Chalk was the penny-pinching owner of D.C. Transit. “I said, ‘You’ll be lucky O. Roy Chalk doesn’t make you pay for his streetcar.’ ” But surely streetcars have a certain romance? Larry thought for a while. “No,” said the only person to have a D.C. streetcar stolen out from under him. After Monday’s column about my family’s aging black Lab, Charlie, I think I heard from every dog owner in Washington. A few cat owners, too. Many readers shared tales of their pets’ last days. For future historians — or students of U.S. pet-naming conventions of the early 21st century — here’s a roll call of these noble beasts. They’re mostly dogs, mostly Labs, and all loved: Decker, Lucky, Derby, Gunnar, Forrest, Brencis, Sierra, Pleiades, Boomer, Cammie, Bella, Snickers, Brodie, Mona, Pepper, Molly, Bower, Bailey, Abe, Sage, Bessie, Pete, Sullivan, Snow, Sam Spade, Mitzi, Coal, Shadeaux, Squirtie, Charley, Pedro, Ollie, Max, Laddy, Oedipuss, Guinness, Elliott Michael, Riley, Dante, Diablo, Colby, Joey, Gaipan, Daisy, Daisy Mae, Champ, Cleo, Louie, Rusty, Buster, Mac, Bee, Gracie, Natalie, Gatsby, Caesar, Rocco, Celty, Woody, Fred, Freddy, Duke, Princess, Roxy, Maggie, Candy, Hansel, Linus, Sophie, Maxx, Gator, Casey, Annie, Gus, Nikiana, Sugar, Kahlua, Madeleine, Drake, Brewster, Domino, Tinsley, Toby, Snooker . . . Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. |