"Between the Creeks" Page: 252

                                
declared a holiday. "The Interurban deserves credit for its patriotism in putting on such a
low rate for the schoolchildren of North Texas," commended a McKinney newspaper.
Dallas stores were taking advantage of the commercial possibilities of the
occasion. Titche-Gettinger and Neiman-Marcus were having special sales on millinery.
A. Harris advertised sales on silk and millinery and invited out-of-town visitors to make
the store headquarters for the day. These stores were leading promoters of "Dallas chic."
The city was famed for fashionable dress. There was a tacit dress code - a lady dressed
up to go downtown. (As late as the mid-1950s, hat and gloves were de rigueur.) Ladies
from the towns along the Interurban line, no less fashion conscious than their city sisters,
wore their best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes to go into Dallas. At that time, skirts were
slim and restrictive. A Paris designer, Paul Poiret, the previous year had produced the
"one-legged woman" look. Bands were placed around the lower legs limiting movement
even more, creating the "hobble skirt." This restrictive hobbling causes some unforeseen
problems for a couple of Allen ladies.
Six-year-old Lucille Bridges was one of the excited children going to see the
Liberty Bell. Her mother, Antha Bridges, and her Aunt Frank Bridges dressed in their
most up-to-date fashions for their trip to Dallas. Because of the large number of
passengers, the Interurban cars were running 45 minutes late; however, there was a
further delay in Allen. The Bridges ladies could not step up into the Interurban car in
their hobble skirts.
The ladies tried and tried, but the step was too high and the skirts too tight. Little
Lucille wondered if she would see the big bell. Finally, the conductor, after much
tugging and pulling, lifted the ladies aboard the car.
In Dallas, the Liberty Bell was greeted with a 21-gun salute. Its railway flatcar
was switched onto the streetcar line, and the bell was paraded down Main Street. Among
the thousands who crowded along the route was the little girl from Allen, standing near
Union Station. A few years ago, Lucille Bridges Brazeal saw the Liberty Bell in
Philadelphia. The bell was just as she remembered from that long-ago day in 1915: "The
same crack and everything."
Interurban stops service after 40 years                            1990s
Quaint streetcars have been restored for a new Dallas attraction. There had been a
tendency to call these cars trolleys, as in "Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley";
however, in Dallas, they have always been known as streetcars, like the one named
"Desire". Technically, trolley refers to the apparatus that connects the cars to the
overhead power line. In North Texas, we had two kinds of electric railway cars using this
mechanism: a streetcar in the cities and Interurban cars connecting the towns. A
distinction was always made between the two types of trolley cars, for the two systems
were either owned by the same company or by sister companies headed by the same
individuals. The cars even shared the same tracks in places. Our Interurban ran on
company-owned rails through the countryside, but joined the Vickery streetcar line at
Bryan and Garrett streets in Dallas. The tightest corner for the big Interurban cars was on
a Dallas street. Early mishaps known as "splitting the switch: occurred on streetcar lines
when the heavier Interurban's wheels followed divergent rails.
In its heyday, the electric railway was in widespread use. The trolley system was
suited to the Midwestern states where the lines could have gentle curves and grades.

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