Author Seeks Your Trolley Car Tales

"Clang, clang, clang went the trolley/Ding, ding, ding went the bell/Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings/As we started for . . .

. . . any station the trolley stopped.

Or, so hopes Linda Betsinger McCann, a historian/writer from Shell Rock who has put out a call for memories of electric trolley cars, particularly those that ran in the first half of the 1900s from Cedar Falls/Waterloo to Cedar Rapids via the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Northern Railway.

"I've had some really great comments," Linda says. "People really like talking about it."

She became fascinated by the trolleys while researching several of the 14 books she's written, particularly those titled "Lost: Black Hawk County Towns" and "Lost: Butler County Towns" about long-gone communities that were once nothing more than streetcar stops.

"There were some places," Linda says, "where the railroad depot would be named one name, the post office would be named another name and, for some reason, a village had another name."

Definitely confusing. Also intriguing.

"I said, somebody needs to write a book about it. I finally decided if i didn't write it, nobody would. These memories would be gone."

Trolleys quit running before Linda, 59, could hop aboard. But, she rode Amtrak to Virginia in 2008 ("I absolutely loved it.") and is familiar with "The Trolley Song" made famous in the 1944 film "Meet Me in St. Louis."

So, if you remember the clangs, the dings, the zings of a local trolley, Linda would love to hear from you. She can be reached by email linjenka@yahoo.com or by calling 319-885-6687.

Her emphasis now is on the W.C.F. and N. Railway which also had lines to Denver, Sumner, Hudson and La Porte City. She's got a map but doesn't feel it's complete.

"A lot of the time," Linda says, "it's a phone call out of the blue. One guy called me from San Diego and talked for an hour."

One story revolved around a man sick with the mumps who, due to loyalty to his employer, went off to work anyway. But, when he wasn't at the trolley stop as usual, the conductor looked around and found him in the bushes. The conductor put him on the trolley and made sure he received medical attention.

To me," she says. "this makes it real. The passengers and the conductors, they became like family."

Then again, its curious that the railway stopped at the edge of Cedar Rapids, blocks from a CRANDIC station for destinations in town and to Iowa City. But why?

"It had to do with governments. I get a lot of my information from reading newspapers. It sounds like Cedar Rapids didn't like these outsiders coming into town."

She also wonders about a town named Mon Dieu, French for "My God," about five miles northwest of Cedar Rapids. "What was the French Connection to Linn County?" she laughs.

For now, Linda plans to have this trolley book, tentatively titled "The Cedar Valley Road," published this fall. She hopes to finish the Linn County book a year later.

"I write for my grandchildren and their children," Linda says. "If I don't, the stories will die."

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net