Carol Schonsberg
Street cars were a popular form of public transport in La Crosse from the 1880s through the 1940s. Kids used to play a trick on the streetcar engineers by pulling off the electrical cables so that the cars would not go. But back when the streetcars were powered by horses the engineers got the last laugh as kids’ marbles often got stuck in the horse manure.
This interview comes from the UWL Oral History Program at Special Collections Murphy Library.
Transcript
Location: 2000 Loomis St.
Carol Schonsberg: The streetcar stopped at about the 2000 block on Loomis and then turned around and went back. I had a girlfriend up there, and I didn’t have to go out early and wait for the streetcar. I could see it coming, and then it would stop there. Then the motorman would take his change and his cash box and move it to the other end. And, either he or whoever was on it [the car] would take all the seats and change them, turn them going the other way. They were the old reed seats. [Voices of other interviewees, Sylvan Schonsberg and Nelson Henry Johnson are heard here agreeing].Then he would go out and put the track thing on heading the other direction.
Chip Ozburn (Interviewer): Put the thing on? Did they have overhead electrical cables that ran from them?
Schonsberg: Yeah, yeah, yep. Cause the kids would pull those. You know, that was fun.
Sylvan Schonsberg (in background): Especially, when they were going up over the viaduct.
Schonsberg: And, the engineer would have to get out and put it back on the line, you know. I mean that was like tipping over an outhouse years ago. It was fun to pull the cable off, you know, because it always had a cord hanging down from it, so that he [the engineer] could adjust it. He’d [the engineer] just no more get ready to go, you know, and it would be off. I mean, he was at a dead stop, so, you know, they [the kids] could just come up there, jump out of the bushes, and do that and nobody would see them. My mom would tell about before that, it’d [the streetcar] be horse drawn. I mean, before they were motorized, you know. And, her father had the hardware store up here, so he knew a lot of the North Side people. And, one of the guys that swept up after the horses would pick up marbles that the kids had played with. And, he’d bring my mother cigar boxes full of marbles from out of the horse droppings. I have boxes and boxes of marbles that she got that way from this guy that would bring them to her at the store.
Ozburn: They weren’t feeding them to the horses, I hope.
Schonsberg: No, no, the kids would be playing, and they’d end up in the gutter. And, the guy sweeping up the horse droppings, you know, would end up with all kinds of marbles, and he’d just pick them out and give them to my mom.