ME ON A TRAM CAR!
The Adventurous Life of a Girl Driver.
WOMEN tram-drivers are not over plentiful yet, and though I have been at the job for a good many weeks now, folk still come to a sudden stop in the street to look at me, in much the same way that they would look if they found a cassowary bird sitting in the middle of their potato patch.
And only yesterday two ladies preferred to walk instead of ride—"because one couldn't feel safe with a woman driver, my dear; a mere girl, too!”
That's by the way. Though it is true enough, some of the women drivers in our town top thirty, but the majority are “mere girls” of twenty or thereabouts. Not inefficient girls, though—if I says it as shouldn't! There's no escaping results.
At the outset I had no thought of driving a car. The idea would have made me laugh once. You see, I went on as a conductress—oh, more than a couple of years ago! —and I stuck it, though tram-conducting is nerve-racking, temper-straining, limb-tiring work for a girl, even if it is healthy from an open-air point of view. At the beginning of the year, when nearly all our men drivers had to go into the Army or on war work, the Company asked for volunteers from the conductresses to learn driving. I was one of those who volunteered, though if you ask me what made me, I can't tell you.
LEARNING TO DRIVE.
ANYWAY, my application was accepted, and I went out with one of the men, watching him and learning the how and why of tram-driving, and driving on my own while he stood by to supervise. Finally, the great day came when I put on a natty blue-and-red uniform, and took a car out entirely on my own—a fully qualified and reliable driver. Nervous, was I? Well, some! Sort of first night stage-fright; but it didn't last once the car was on the road. That was the beginning. I've gone on ever since, and the more I drive, the more I want to go on.
It isn't easy work or work to be taken up lightly as “interesting war work for women.” It wants steady nerves and strong physique, good balance and self-control, the power for brain and hand to act in unison—on the spur of the moment when necessary. Moreover, tram-driving differs from other driving. We've had one or two expert women motorists on trial who have been absolutely bunkered by the cars. Women with the worry habit aren't any good either. If you begin to think too much about being responsible for the safety of a car-load of persons—well, you will soon worry yourself out of driving and into an accident, for sure!
IT WAS AN EXPERIMENT.
IF you ask me, all the members of the Tramways Committee in our town were rather dubious about girl drivers when we started.
It was all necessity, and no choice which led to the innovation. But they are not so now—far from it. At the last meeting there were no end of complimentary things said about the women drivers, and a friendly message was sent to the Tramways Council of another city (which had lately downed the suggestion of having women tram-drivers) to the effect that there was no reason for them to fear to make the innovation if they could get girls like our girls. “Careful and conscientious; entirely dependable; interested in their work.” I’m only telling you what they said!
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