An EYE for an I

An EYE for an I ---
or The Mystery of the Missing Street
                                                                                     © KENNETH E. HALL   DECEMBER 10, 2018   HOUSTON

Back in the early 1950's, my uncle and aunt moved from the Panamá Canal Zone to our Nation's Capital, Washington, D.C. to work for the USIS. I still have the envelope in which my Aunt Marie told my grandmother about their new home town, etc. One day as I looked at the back of the envelope, I noticed something funny: her address was "EYE" Street, NW.

Now that street name would perhaps not been noticed by anyone else, even though it was a somewhat peculiar name, but I was nonplussed. I had lived for several years in D.C., and also in Arlington, VA, and in all that time, I never ever heard of anything like "Eye Street". So, I did what I thought was the right thing - I looked it up on a city map, but to my further bewilderment, I couldn't find any street in the District that even remotely resembled "EYE St.".So where in the world did my aunt and uncle live in DC, I wondered.

I thought about novels I have read, and about the all-seeing EYE of Providence that was on the $1.00 bill. I could imagine it glowing a piercing shade of emerald green, perched atop a great pyramid at the head of that very street...EYE STREET!

Later on, while driving (I quite often think about oddball things while driving!) again I pondered my relatives' bizarre address. Washington, D.C. is a well-planned city. All talk about Masonic triangulations and vast Illuminati conspiracies aside, the city is well laid-out. l'Enfant did his job well. Anyone who has lived in or visited cities such as San Antonio, TX or New Orleans can greatly appreciate how relatively easy it is to find an address in the District of Columbia. One way, the streets are numbered - consecutively. Another way the streets have letters - A,B,C,D and so forth. The main exception is that quite a number of streets are named after states.

There are no oddball, unpronounceable words to baffle and bamboozle even the seasoned local, things in D.C. are straightforward and easy to understand. I lived at 710 19th Street NW. Were I to give this address to any local cabbie, or any Washingtonian for that matter, they would know EXACTLY where I lived! They knew that I lived on 19th Street near "G" street. Simple. Take it from me - I used to get lost in cities - - - but NEVER EVER in D.C.

So I pondered this "Eye" street address and suddenly it dawned on me: she meant "I" street! That was only two streets down from where we had lived in 1960!! I chuckled to myself, thinking that poor Aunt Marie - she was moving from Panamá and heard "I" and just wrote out the word "Eye"!     I bet she had a laugh when she eventually discovered  her mistake.

But my Aunt Marie wasn't by ANY means alone in this "Eye" for an "I" substitution. Apparently even locals have been guilty of writing it wrong. It gets better: some businesses and buildings even write "I" as "Eye" to avoid confusion with 1 (one) street.

  

I wondered what the U.S. Post Office did over the years with envelopes addressed to "Eye St." addresses. A Washington Post article published a comment by the Postmaster who said:
“[There] is hardly a letter in the alphabet which a careless writer is not able to make appear like some other letter, and he generally succeeds,” W.H. Haycock, superintendent of delivery, told The Post.

[ I can attest to that fact! NO college student has ever graduated without first having been able to morph any given letter into another - either willingly or as an embarassing typo boldly appearing and going undetected on the first page of a thesis!]


Moreover, THERE IS NO "J" STREET in D.C !! The reason? "J" looks something like an "I". When in Germany, I had trouble with this, because the way these letters appear, they do look alike. It would also be confused with the letter l (L) which also looks exactly like the number 1. (1 - l) See what I mean?   I suppose while they were designing the city they could have had a J street anyway, even if only for purposes of consistancy, and just call the doggone street "Jay" and be done with it. Right, they COULD have done that, but that would have been too simple.

They could have said it was named after John Jay, the first Supreme Court Justice of the United States, or after the Blue Jay, and we'd all have been happy as a Jay bird. As it turns out, where "J" street is is for the locals to know and the out-of-towners to find out. Truth is, there really IS a "JAY" street NE and it runs through the Deanwood neighborhood. It is not associated with the rest of the alphabetized streets in DC.

I can just imagine a situation in which a visiting man is looking to pick up a girl who does not care to be picked up. He asks for her address, and she writes down 1234 J St. NW. The guy walks away fat, dumb, and happy thinking he has a date, and then goes nuts looking for the place later. Imagine him walking up and down the cross street - LITERALLY "J-Walking"! That'll teach him!

Finally, although I do not know why, there are no X,Y, or Z streets in DC. Guess they ran out of space.

I quote here from a Post Article, the link appears below:
"Not everyone has found this amusing. In 1908, The Post published an article quoting residents who thought the practice was kind of cheesy. Not only were people using “Eye” Street, they were also referring to U Street as “You” Street. Wrote The Post: “The name of the optic and of the second person of the pronoun have almost superseded the use of the proper names of these streets. The custom, if it makes progress as to result in the use of words for the letters on street signs, will subject the Capital to the ridicule of visitors, say the opponents of the fad, for its provincialism.”

I am a man of words, and can think of many words to use when it comes to describe Washington's present-day residents, but "provincial" would not be in the top 20,000!

NOTE: The city of Galevston, Texas has letter avenues, too. So how do they address the issue of "I", "J", and "U" avenues? Simple: There are NO such streets - No I, no J, no U - no problem. BUT they do have HALF avenues: O½ Ave. being my personal favorite.


                 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Here is the link to a Washington Post article I found:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/looking-for-eye-street-answer-man-is-here-to-give-you-directions/2013/10/12/5c1e42b0-31c2-11e3-8627-c5d7de0a046b_story.html?utm_term=.2017824f8817

TROLLEY LINES - END OF THE LINE

TROLLEY LINES - END OF THE LINE
© KENNETH E. HALL DECEMBER 1, 2018 HOUSTON

"...So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near—

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm;                    but you wanted me to tame you…”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.     - -  - - from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

RICHARD KOTULAK PHOTO*

ONE YEAR BEFORE THE TOTAL DEMISE OF STREETCARS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,  THE #40 LINE BOARDED PASSENGERS 

AT MT. PLEASANT & LAMONT STREETS.  AFTER THE STREETCAR SERVICE WAS  DISCONTINUED ON DECEMBER 3, 1961,

THE #42 BUS LINE REPLACED THE OLD TROLLEY LINE, FOLLOWING THE ORIGINAL  #40 RAIL ROUTE. 

Many years ago, the streets of our Nation's Capital were paved with granite blocks called cobblestones. Imbedded in these grey rocks were shiny steel rails for the streetcars to ride on. The automobiles that rode on the uneven cobblestones got a bumpy, bumpy ride, but the streetcars, because they were riding on LEVEL ribbons of highly polished steel, gave their passengers a very smooth ride indeed! The streetcar lines seemed to to everywhere in the city, and even went far off into the Maryland woods and crossed the great Potomac River to Rosslyn Loop in Arlington.

As a little boy, I loved riding these things that everyone called "trolleys." I especially enjoyed the times these cars would descend into Dupont Tunnel and it would get real dark down there - that is until we climbed back up and out of the tunnel and onto the streets again.

Streetcars were strange things that sometimes swayed from side-to-side when they went fast, made an odd "croooo" sound every time they went around a curve, and every so often, they'd make a "POP" sound when the motorman accelerated too fast causing a current surge and the circuit breaker got overloaded. They weren't jerky, noisy, or stinky like the buses were, so I guess they had to do something just to let people know they were there.

𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓣𝓻𝓸𝓵𝓵𝓮𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓢𝓺𝓾𝓲𝓻𝓻𝓮𝓵

There was once a kind gentleman who drove a streetcar. He was as proud as he could be of his "¹magic carpet made of steel". Although it really wasn't his own, he drove it up and down the rails of the city as if it were! People who operate streetcars aren't called "drivers' like those who drive buses or taxis; they are called "Motormen", though I doubt they ever see a streetcar motor!

The kind gentleman was nice to all of his passengers, and they all, in turn, had a cheery "Hello" or "How do you do?" whenever they climbed aboard, and they all said a merry "Goodbye" or "See you tomorrow!" whenever they'd get off. Kindness begets kindness.

Soon enough, his streetcar would round the little curved track and he would stop inside a small park - it was the end of the line. When the last passengers had all gotten off and gone their separate ways, he would leave the front entrance door open during his several minute layover.

All was quiet in that park - that is, except for the cheeping of the birds from the trees. This was the kind gentleman's favorite part of his trip! Although he loved chatting with the people, and he was ever so proud of his shiny, clean magic carpet, it was his time of rest that he most looked forward too. There was a reason for this!


A minute or so after everyone had departed, a bushy-tailed squirrel would cautiously appear upon the steps of the streetcar, peer all around, and then would hop up those steps -just like any regular paying passenger. Then he would come up to the motorman - still sitting

in his driver's seat. Sure enough, the kind gentleman had a treat for the little guy - usually some peanuts or pieces of fruit. There was only one person that squirrel was ever known to go up to and befriend - and that was our kind gentleman.



Every day the streetcar rounded that end-of-the-line curve and stop for its layover, and every day the little squirrel would come to have lunch with his friend. Those who were lucky enough to see the man and the little squirrel interact were in awe and disbelief and they always stood perfectly still and quiet until the little squirrel and the motorman had had their meal together.

Then one day, the city fathers decided it was time to take off the old streetcars and put buses on that route, and the steel wheels squealed 'round the curve no more. The kind gentleman was now driving a shiny brand-new Diesel bus. He was so sorry to see the old trolleys go, and wondered if progress always had to come at such a price.

On the first day of his new job as bus driver, the man pulled into the same tree-shaded place in the park where his old trolley car had once waited. He opened his door and got out his bag of goodies for his little bushy-tailed friend, but the squirrel was nowhere to be seen. For the rest of the time that the man drove his bus on the same route, he never ever saw the little squirrel again.

The kind gentleman was sad because he missed the old streetcars, but sadder still because his little friend no longer came to eat with him. It is said that nothing is constant but change, but he sure wished that certain things would not change. Some people don't understand that nostalgic feeling, but I do.

By the time I was ten years old, there were no more streetcars gliding up and down the streets of Washington, D.C. They all had reached the end of their line. A few short years later, most of the steel rails had been torn from the cobblestone streets, and even those bumpy granite blocks, for the most part, either had been cemented over or covered with asphalt, and it was as if they never had existed in the first place.

The D.C. streetcars and those cobblestone streets are gone - "gone to join the swelling ranks of things that we look back upon." But every once in awhile, I'll pass a little park, sit down upon an old bench, and remember my years in D.C., that old streetcar, the kind gentleman who ran it, and his little friend the squirrel, and, oh, yes, those nice, cool autumn breezes filled with falling leaves.

 

A BIT OF D.C. STREETCAR HISTORY:

On July 1 of 1955 I lived in the 1400 block of Pennsylvania Ave, NW in Washington, DC. The month began with a transit strike that crippled the nation's capital - causing exceedingly great inconvenience and untold expense to those Washingtonians who could least afford it. Neither the transit company nor the strikers seemed to care about the community at large.

The strike, only the third of its kind in the history of the city, lasted some seven seemingly unending weeks, and ended with a Congress-directed change of administration. What had been Capital Transit became D.C. Transit, formed by O. Roy Chalk, a New York financier. Although Chalk wanted to keep the streetcars, as an integral part of his purchase agreement with Congress, his marching orders were to completely replace the streetcar system with buses by 1963. So the streetcar lines began to be eliminated on Sept. 7, 1958, and the last day of operation for electric streetcars was January 28, 1962.

NOTE: The above story "The Trolley and the Squirrel" was inspired by true events as reported in a brief article which appeared in a Washington, D.C. area newspaper some time in around 1959-1961 and was related to me by my Aunt Lucy when I told her they were taking off the streetcars in Washington, D.C. If I am able to find this article, I will post proper credit.

*Photo is from: https://wamu.org/story/12/08/17/visiting_washingtons_original_streetcar_suburbs/
ARTICLE: "Visiting Washington's Original "streetcar Suburbs" by Rebecca Sheir

¹"Magic Carpet Made of Steel" is a quote from and a reference to the song: "City of New Orleans" - written and performed by folksinger Arlo Guthrie

***** If you enjoyed this story, you might find this interesting also:
http://kennyduke.blogspot.com/2014/06/trolley-lines-cabin-john-to-glen-echo.html       

WELCOME PAGE 
I INVITE YOU TO READ MY BLOG!
http://kennyduke.blogspot.com/p/welcome.html