…and that’s just fine by her.

You might not know it yet kiddo, but Mom is the only mother on the block who never got her driver’s license. In fact, she will live the rest of her life without having ever operated a motorized vehicle. Why? Who knows? Some combination of panic and rage I imagine. But it’s probably just as well; Mom was always too tightly wound to be behind the wheel anyway. Right? I mean, can you imagine if somebody were to cut her off, or wait too long at a traffic light? It wouldn’t be pretty, would it? And you would probably end up bearing the brunt of it.

But as weird as Mom can sometimes seem, her aversion to driving (together with a genuine and rather magical gift for spontaneity) has always brought with it the promise of adventure. You just never know when she might suddenly drop everything she’s doing and tell us to get ready. For what? Well, that’s the thing, it could be just about anything. But the best are the spontaneous trips into the big city of Milwaukee. And these are never trips of necessity, which is precisely what makes them adventures.

Sometimes she’ll take us to the Milwaukee Public Museum (which will only get bigger and better as the years go by, and will never grow tiresome). Sometimes it’s the Public Library, filled as it is with so many stories and ideas and always as quiet and mysterious as a church. Other times she’ll do a little shopping (mostly window shopping) at huge department stores with names like Gimbels or Schuster’s, both utter wonderlands of elevators and escalators and clothes and appliances and toys. And when the trips are at Christmas time, the stores are spectacularly festive, with so many lights and decorations and piped-in holiday music it’s like you somehow ended up at the North Pole! Downtown also usually means grilled cheese sandwiches and Coca Cola at the Woolworth lunch counter. You will have the opportunity to eat all sorts of delicious and exotic foods by the time you’re an old man, but few will match the perfection of those lunches with Mom in the swirling chaotic hubbub of downtown Milwaukee.

As with so many things in life, at least half the fun in these excursions lies in the getting there. And with mom refusing to drive, that will always mean a ride on the glorious Number 18 Trackless Trolley. The trolley is a bus, really, but one that runs on electricity, drawing its power from an intricate spider’s web of electric lines that seems spread over the entire world. You love watching Mom drop the coins into the fare box and treasure the transfers she receives from the driver. The Number 18 will take us all the way downtown from our home in West Allis, but we always get transfers anyway. And you treasure them as if they were relics bearing witness to a divine apparition. There are  brown leather-like seats and chrome hand grips and poles. The tug of a cloth-bound line running along both sides of the trolley will trigger a chime letting the driver know that he should pull over at the next stop. There are advertising posters too, many with a design style that will guide your work years from now, when you make your living as a commercial artist.

I know I don’t have to tell you to treasure these moments with Mom, but I do want to let you know that the trolleys won’t be around forever. Nor will Schuster’s or Gimbels for that matter. The future—as interesting as it is in a lot of ways—simply has no place for them. So enjoy it all while you can, and soak in the experience so that it becomes part of who you are. And one day, when the time is right, you can share the memories with others. And you will.

“The Trackless Trolleys”  1992   John T. McCarthy, Jr.   8-color silkscreen