| Show FLOYD GIBBONS M adventurers club aln A hero conductor 10 by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter f STEP up to the front of the car please and have correct fares ary 0 LJ ready weve got a trolley car conductor with us today as guest 0 t of honor and we have to watch our streetcar street car manners especially V p 01 do we with a conductor like richard mayock a man who has mad quite a reputation for himself at this business of conducting trolleys trolle yi for dick Is 13 known the en ali and breadth of lie district of columbia 1 y 1 the hero conductor of washington what the newspapers called bleir alc mayock and with good reason too for in the middle of april 1023 he earned 0 fi that title of his earned it two or three time ff dicks car had just finished a trip into town had turned at the th yf treasury building and started back As the car left the treasury be hind it rain began to fall suddenly and in such volume that it looked to dick as if everything on the streets would be washed away back in the car the passengers were baying that it was a cloudburst anil ail r exactly what nhat it was the streets of washington looked like canals and dicks trolley plows plowed through an almost unbroken stretch of water which sometimes came as aass higl s as the hubs of the wheels C the terrors of flood in the nations capital tl the car reached the city limits at a place called kenilworth junction 1 into an underpass that ran beneath a railroad bridge and there it happened dick opened the door to look out and the sight he saw froze him still ba 1 his tracks up ahead was a wall of water several feet high rushing down into the underpass toward the front of the car more water was shooting from the manholes in great spouts six feet tall below the flood had bad already risen to the bottom step of the car and that great onrushing wall of water was still to come the wall of water hit the car with a shock that shook it from end to eai the passe passengers agers a bout about twenty five of them rose from their seats and began stampeding for the door conductor keeps cool in face of tragedy and right there was where dick mayock did some fast thinking he looked out into that swirling flood and remembered that the river at this point wu wall only a few hundred yards away s anyone who got caught in that rush of water outside stood a good chance of being swept into the river and drowned ho he etwood with his back to the door and told the passengers to get back in their seats they going to be drowned not while he was responsible for them those passengers must have known dick meant business because they till fall back and started climbing up on top of the seats the water was two feet I 1 high in the car now and rising steadily shrieks and sobs fill the air when the water got to be waist lid high it says dick 1 I began to think that NA i za J 4 the dark muddy water kept on rising my time had come and im sure everyone else felt the same for we seemed hopelessly trapped the shrieks and the prayers of the women were pitiful I 1 had bad to ih do something and do it quickly so I 1 grabbed an umbrella broke all the windows on one side of the car and climbed up on the roof there I 1 pulled down the trolley pole pola to keep anyone from being electrocuted and lying flat on my stomach helped the passengers up one at a time the dark muddy water kept on rising it was within a couple or of feet of the top of the car when dick thought he heard a moan coming from somewhere 0 inside the passengers told him hed be washed away if he be tried to go back lat into it it that car but dick went anyway worked his bis legs back in through a window while bile two men held field onto his arms 1 if dick was a hero here was a heroine t and the sight he saw when he got inside the car dick will never forget 9 lie he lives to be a hundred there in that almost filled car was a woman dazedly ClID clinging ging to a sw with ith one hand while she held a baby with the other trying to keep its lied 1 til out of the water ater ill dick grabbed the baby floundered to the side of the car and passed t it it through a window to the men on top but when he turned back to t help up the woman she had disappeared down into the muddy water that filled the bottom of the car pt i dick lived dived and found her pulled her to a window and thrust her out lath 1111 the hands of those above then lie he climbed to the roof himself and applied artificial respiration to t 1 the woman who had swallowed water and was as half drow drowned Ded the water kept rising until it was flush with the car roof and then it stopped lor for two hours this strange little crew of cast stayed on tm roof and then the fire department cime came A fireman with a rope tied around his waist tried to swim out to it the car J the current was too swift for him though and he had to be pulled back alter after two or three tries lie he managed to reach nu an electric light pole 12 fee ik from the car and the marooned passengers threw him an improvised line ciaio of the trolley rope and some knotted neckties I 1 after he got to them ladders were ere strung along the rope lind dud soon tm i entire party was on land again put cut boy what a shindig g while it lastell 11 0 service |
