Two To The Valley Poem by Roger K.A. Allen

I was driving home from work one night
Peak-hour crawling,
An the red taillights trailing,
In the chill winter rain,
To the rhythmic lub-dub of the wipers.
In the black puddles,
White car lights like Cracker Night sparklers,
And the bitter-sweat memories of childhood.
And the tram tracks lie buried beneath me,
By a sudden Council decree,
The trams burned like Troy;
To a sad and inglorious finale.

Our trams said “knock-knock” when they started,
Enlivened by wires overhead, all electric,
Clayfield-Salisbury the line,
Route 171 blazoned in front, fore and aft,
With slats seats of hardwood, all varnished,
And armrests with brass art déco curves.
Sliding doors in the front and the back
And in the bare open middle,
Green canvas screens
That slid down in summer storms.

Old ladies with sticks
Swollen legs and hairnets,
And the smell of rouge and baby powder.
Young women with tight and shapely stockings,
And the occasional ladder,
Children holding Mother’s gloved hand
And school boys with their scratched ports,
Hanging like apes from Bakelite handles.
Trams were like tea and butter,
Predicable, clean and safe,
Governed by unwritten codes,
Women and children in the front compartment,
Men in the middle and rear.
And men and boys stood
For the fairer sex and the frail,
Like knights of the Round Table
For to do other was shame-
Unthinkable.

These trams saw baggy Khaki
And Navy with bell-bottoms
Creased with the seven seas,
And wings on wool jackets of dark blue,
Back from that other world,
That no one knew.
Then some girls wore “scanties”
Undone by a sudden gust
A glimpse of white thighs
Under those loose satin panties,
And the black rubber deck,
Was pock-marked by gum
By boys still to have Service Numbers.
I was about four and wore a blue sailor suit,
Too starched for my liking.
“Two to the Valley”,
Mum said to a middle-aged man,
Who looked more like a gendarme
With his kepi, dark belt and Sam Brown,
With a metal holder of coins
Like a diver’s dead lead,
On his crazed leather waist.
Heavy columns of loot,
Florins of 90% silver,
Rams’ heads on shillings
Silver threepence and zacks,
Coppers with kangaroos bounding,
And smaller half-pennies,
With George the fifth and the sixth,
Green paper pounds, fivers, and tenners,
And those awfully drab grey ten shillings,
In a latched cow-hide pouch
With the stale smell of money on leather.

A drunk from the races,
Gets in with his winnings,
A pound for a sixpenny fare,
To the wrath of the man
Who punches exactitude into his ticket;
Our route, time and place,
To be kept for a later inspector
In the sweat of a dirty shirt pocket.

At last we alight at the end of our section,
At that Mecca of Fortitude Valley,
“Roger, it’s this stop”.
I bet you she’ll shop til we drop, At proud TC Beirne’s
And “world-famous” McWhirters.
It’s now China Town
As the old “Valley” has gone,
To reside my own recollections,
But the trams will still run
While the sweet rails of childhood have traction.