dovate

Back when I was a baby, I used to sit at my parent’s bedroom window and look out onto the street. Few things on Greene street in Germantown impressed me as much as Septa buses. They made such a big impression that I invented my own word for them: “Da!.”

The bus was an impressive beast. It was big, loud and it shook the whole house. When I was 11, lying in a bed on a farmhouse in Northern California, I woke up to an earthquake. In my middle of the night delirium I assumed it was just a Septa bus and went back to sleep. Ancient people believed that earthquakes were caused by the gods. I assumed it was Septa. For better or for worse, Philly’s transit agency has shaped some of the most fundamental aspects of my existence.

For a couple of years now, I’ve wanted to write my own Septa autobiography. My idea was to use public transit as the yarn with which to weave together my own Philadelphia experience. Shitty metaphors aside, it’s actually not a bad idea. I don’t own a car and didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 27. I’ve lived in this city my entire life and have ridden Septa to nearly every corner of it. These are my stories.

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The 23 Trolley

Wikipedia used to say that the 23 was the longest trolley line in the world but since the last time I checked, someone has removed that sentence. Either way, at about 14 miles it’s a long line. Starting way up at the top of Chestnut Hill in the northwestern corner of the city, the 23 travels southeast on Germantown Ave, hops over to 12th near Broad and Erie, winds its way down center city and South Philly before terminating a couple blocks from the stadiums.

You could drive to New York in the time it takes to ride from one end to the other. Until high school, I never rode it out of the northwest.

While the XH on Greene Street was the first Septa route to get my attention, the 23 was the first line that I actually remember riding.

It was Germantown in the early 80’s and I was with my mom near Germantown and Chelten. Considering my age (about 3) I remember it well. The thing that made the 23 stick in the mind of a toddler was that it was a trolley. It ran on tracks. It was loud. It threw sparks where the trolleywheel met the overhead wires. It was fucking awesome.

The cars were the very same 40’s era airstream looking things that were recently refurbished, painted green and put in service on Girard Ave. In the early 80’s though, the 23 trolley cars were in prefurbished condition. The floors were dirty, the seats were ripped and they smelled like 4 decades of mildew.

In other words, they were built to last, but maintained by Septa.

As a very young child, I only rode the 23 trolley a handful of times. As far as I remember, all the trips were from my home in Germantown up to Chestnut Hill. Other than the way it looked, felt and smelled I remember very little about those trips.

I noticed that people in Germantown were mostly black and people in Chestnut Hill were mostly white, but I didn’t know why that was, or how that mattered. All I knew was that I liked how the trolley glided awkwardly up the cobblestone road. I liked the open space in the middle and the plush seats that curved with the body of the car. I liked the ribbed rubber mats on the floor and the big windows that looked out over Germantown Avenue. I liked how high above the street I was and how people looked at the big orange trolley as it rumbled past them.

When I was 11, my family moved to Mt. Airy, the neighborhood between working class black Germantown and rich, waspy white Chestnut Hill. In Mt. Airy, we lived a block from the Avenue. I’d go to the corner with my friends and put pennies on the tracks. I know this sounds cliqued, but we really spent afternoons that way… sitting on the corner, smashing pennies with streetcars. At night I’d lie in bed and listen to the trolley rumbling at top speed towards Chestnut Hill. There was a downhill straightaway just past my block, where the drivers could hit 40-45mph in the middle of the empty Mt. Airy night.

In 1992, after years of fits and starts, the trolleys were officially discontinued. By the time I was riding the 23 to high school, the route was all buses.

Next up, the 23 buses.