Catch the Double Dutch Bus—Gus!

A long, long time ago, in a far off place great iron-horses and steel stage-coaches, roamed the streets of independence, Kansas. On the street where we lived, just like fossils are reminders of another time, there were train tracks in the middle of the brick road. The tracks were for the electric interurban streetcars that ran from Independence to Coffeyville, later to Parsons and Cherryvale.

The streetcars stopped running in the 40's when more efficient transportation became available in cars and buses. I saw nothing but the evidence that the town ever had a version of mass transit on its streets where I later dragged-raced and collected speeding-tickets, but I did see the buses because one stopped right on the corner of Earl and Walnut Street. I'd see people from around the neighborhood coming home from work. I even rode it once with my mother to the A&P grocery on Main Street. Of course, we sat in the back.

The buses disappeared when efficient taxi service came along just a few years late. Not to let us forget a bygone era, the city pulled up the streetcar tracks and paved over them, but only where the tracks laid, leaving a six-foot wide and miles long reminder that streetcars once traveled the streets of Independence. Even though the interurbans, as they were called, ran for nearly 40 years, they were never a money maker.

Public transportation didn't disappear completely; as I recall a 1952 or 1953 Chevrolet-stretch limo ran between Independence and Coffeyville. That's right a stretch-Chevy. Painted a faded dark-blue, it also stopped at the corner of Earl and Walnut. I remember it so well because it always showed up at the zenith of our street football games.

Today, almost all signs that a streetcar ran down the welcoming streets of Independence, Kansas stretches the imagination, but they did and I wish that I could have ridden one. I am a railroad fan and have been since my first ride on the Santa Fe Chieftain to Chicago as a child. I was hooked from that moment. My older brother Fuzz had a real Lionel train set that would be worth many thousands of dollars today. That set was rarely disassembled.

In Dallas, we have buses and a rail system that almost qualify as useful. Driving ten miles to get to a train that only takes you only a little bit further caused me great cognitive dissonance. My biggest problem with them is that none ever neared a place I worked or anyone else for that matter. If you work downtown, it is perfect, even with the drive, but the jobs have moved mostly to the suburbs where the population resides.

There is train that runs between Dallas and Ft. Worth that my wife and I ride occasionally; it's a leisurely 30-minute commute that drops you near Sun Dance Square in Ft. Worth, where as long as it is warm there are free concerts—jazz and blues concerts with local favorites like Warren Hill. Of course, there are always guests like Najee, Kirk Whalum, Peter White, Billy Cobham, Larry Carlton and more. We have a rubber-tired Interurban streetcar by the Fog City Diner that Troy Aikman owns. It’s OK.

Obviously I live in nostalgia-land, but I wish I could get on a streetcar and ride the entire route through Southeastern, Kansas. I rode a float for five minutes in a Neewalloh parade, it didn't float my boat or streetcar.

Don