If you had a cow to sell would you flag down the motorman of a crowded street car and attempt to unload a sales talk to the engineer of the street car on the virtues of your cow?
There is one man in Charlotte who has pursued that method of disposing of a cow.
Saturday, about 1 o’clock, a Belmont car, loaded down with hungry commuters, hastening home to their hot lunches, was stopped by a man waving his arms in the air and motioning to the motorman to stop. The car was moving down East Trade street near Caldwell, and the motorman, thinking probably the man wished to board his car, slowed down. He watched the man and saw that he was chasing the car.
Instead of going to the rear of the car, he ran to the front, from the left side, as if to head it off, just as he had often headed off a cow. While hungry passengers grew hungrier, the sales talk continued, against the will of the car operator. The motorman tried to get away but the man with the cow was determined to reach some definite agreement with the man without a cow.
Finally the motorman said he would meet him after his run was over and the car was able to proceed toward hot lunches.
A ripple of laughter passed through the car when the drift of the conversation at the helm of the car was caught by passengers.
From The Charlotte News, Sunday, Feb. 12, 1922. I found the image of the Charlotte trolley online; it's not from the newspaper.
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