During the first fourteen years or so of my life, I was instinctively afraid of public transportation, especially subways. This was to be expected, as I was from Mississippi, where "public transportation" means a nice new four-lane highway. At best, subways looked intensely confusing, and meant for no one who hadn't been raised knowing how to get across Manhattan. At worst, they were graffiti-choked rust-colored lines of death, where, as movies and books of the late '70s and '80s assured me, I could look forward to being harassed at best, robbed in all probability, and possibly raped and murdered. This view was of course based on the subways of New York, which at the time were not undeserving of their reputation. Occasionally, however, you came across a more flattering portrayal even then.
There is not actually a secret abandoned pneumatic subway tunnel, complete with a car full of luxurious decayed fittings, under New York City. It was probably destroyed around 1912. Why we here in twenty-first-century America do not use pneumatic tubes for subways or indeed nearly everything is at first a mystery, although, as a professor once told us at law school, the answer to any question beginning "Why don't we . . ." is generally "Money." Most likely no one could be moved to invest in a citywide underground infrastructure for small deliveries when the post office and various courier services did well enough. Today pneumatic tubes are mainly featured in bank drive-through lanes and old office buildings.
The worst streetcar accident in United States history was the Malbone Street wreck, in Brooklyn in 1918. An inexperienced young company man, pressed into service as a scab during the evening rush hour, took a curve at about 40 mph. That particular line had been designed for speeds of up to 6. In the subsequent derailment, ninety-three people were killed.
I was in some kind of train mishap today, although no one was more than put out. Hundreds of us were put out, in fact, at Charles/MGH, a small platform stop which was suddenly packed solid with grumbling milling bodies. At least that was in the open air, which was much nicer than sitting underground for twenty minutes while our train was hooked up to push along the train in front, after that train had some kind of engine failure. The only casualty was one woman who had regained her feet and was gratefully cooperating with her "rescuers" by the time they could lead her off to the convenient hospital. Thankfully, no one was mentally disturbed or otherwise prone to making it a war hell ride. I was sitting next to a lady who was doing her best with three children and an infant, and not far from a slip of a girl with a heavily muscled bull terrier. The dog was as good as gold, and delighted in the petting of strangers. His behavior, in fact, stood in marked contrast to that of the three children, especially the little boy, who made a constant "nnnnnn-whnnnn-hnnnnn" insectoid sort of noise to relieve his boredom, even before the car ever stopped. To be fair, the dog wore one of these, the use of which is frowned upon by most child-care experts.
I grew up hearing about Malbone Street - the train crashed on approach to my subway station.
Posted by: ADS | May 30, 2006 at 05:49 PM