THE "MOTORMAN TALKS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 6861, 3 July 1909, Page 4

THE "MOTORMAN TALKS.

TEN-MINUTE STORY. COURTENAY-PLACE TO NEWTOWN. Said the Motorman "This is what I've come to in my, old ago. I've driven everything from' nails to. bargains and from mudcarts to motor-oars. You'll find that most Wellington motormen are just natural drivers, probably dragged up on a farm among horses. If you called a mounted parade of motormen to-morrow, few of them would fall off. Curious mania this of shifting around on something besides your own legs. Sort of 'gets you down.* I don't want a standing still or walking about job, I want to bo on a barge or a cart or a motor-oar or a train or a car, or something I don't have to shove. The mania for moving is related to ' the mania for drinking—you can't help it. Oefe on a bloke's nerves? Take your oath it does! A motorman told me when I: joined that A man couldn't 'stick' driving on electric cars for more than twoyears. I've been on it over three, and I ain't bust up yet. Still, mind you, there's times at night when a man 6ees womeir and perambulators being torn to pieces in his dreams and care biffing into things and- playing particular whatsisname.

There's. me for instance. I drive on one of the hill,runs—brakes all the way for a mile or 'two, whips of corners and the narrowest part of the town to wind up in. You blokes don't get accident paragraphs becaiuse, we are always looking for trouble. Tram brakes axe perfect nowadays, but the man at the handle has to keep hi 6 eyes skinned and he hasn't got to do too many long beer acts. We don't want any pity of,course because we get paid , fox saving people's lives and not running into cartloads of metal and we expect to be biffed out if we buret up the show. But we have our crosses. Although as most people know every car stops nowadays at every stopping place, there's a terrible lot of bellringing and perhaps if you-haven't had a bell jingling in you ! rear all day' long you and don't know how it gets on man's nexvts. A steam lony don't look tod terrible; to a passenger, but a motorman never knows whether its going to pull across the metaU or what its going to do until he's past it. You don't ses the motorman grinding away like billy-o : at his brake wheel just to save a, heap of-people from getting bashed into the back of a sand dray—and if a, car does bash a dray, ten to one the man on the dray quite naturally thinks hj was pulling out instead of-pulling in across the line. Wellington people cut things a bit fine nowadays, and they dodge; across a street in front of a fast car same as they would: have done ten yeare ago in front of a springoart. ■ It's all right I suppose but it keeps a man a bit strung up with the anxiety of it all. People will keep dinging the bell in beween stops and of course there is i the man who feels brave enough to go slow—just- after pub closing, who wanders across the track and never know 6 how near death he has been. We hate killing people and that s why we don't do it. ; Ladies sometimes growl about a car moving off before they are properly seated but; most of them have got broken into hurrying a bit and not kissing all the family on the step while the conductor is twanging tie bell. About three women in every four who stand at a stop with a large sign painted on it 'All Cars Stop Here' wave their gamps a lot to halt a car that has got to pull up anyhow. I■ ■ suppose standing up in a car peering out through the glass and wondering if anything is going to biff you on a cross street makes a man a bit nervous but 1 never know such things to make men careless. ■ ■ ~,-, We fellows suffer a bit from nerve strain as the doctors call it and now and then a niotorman's eyes go a bit cronk. Then although we travel around we don't get too muoh walking exercise, and a lot of us take pills for biliousness and stomach troubles. I don't go much on pills myself. Teetotalers? Yes a groat many of us. It's best and the Corporation never forces drink on a man so to speak. Getting out here? Well I got to go on shift. So long?"