There were double-decker buses on Sacramento Boulevard in 1924, when I was ten. The big sport on Sunday afternoon was to ride up to the statue at Logan Square, which was the end of the line, and sit around until the bus decided to go back. Ten cents. And then you had to pay another ten cents to get back.
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We’d ride on the top down Sacramento Boulevard, the open top. We loved it when the driver called, “Duck your head. Low bridge ahead.” If anybody was standing they better get down.
Everybody rode streetcars. There weren’t all these cars back then. We rode by ourselves from the time we were eight, my sister Marge and me.
In rush hour the men would let the women get up the stairs, then they’d take the last step and they’d hold us all on. Everybody’d be jammed into the platform, and the men would hang on the outside and hold everybody up. If one of them let go we’d all be out on the street.
Anyway, this one night he fell off the car. He went to the hospital, and they examined him and said he was all right and sent him home. But he had every ambulance chaser in town after him.
