The Great Edinburgh Trams Disaster

WC Fields as “The Great McGonigle” in THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY.

I like trams. I like riding on them, and seeing them in movies. I was a little perplexed when Edinburgh decided to get a tram system of its own, since we already have a very good bus service. Advertisements for the imminent new transport system couldn’t quite explain what it was going to bring to the table. Maybe it would be more environmentally friendly? Unfortunately, the unexpected amount of time the project has taken to be completed means it’ll be all but impossible to offset the carbon footprint of five years worth of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. And nothing can offset the damage done to businesses by closed roads, and to quality of life by all the roadworks.

I attended Marvelous Mary’s annual William McGonagall Dinner, in celebration of the world’s worst poet (a Scotsman, naturally), and was asked to write something about the trams, on the grounds that McGonagall always liked to get his teeth into a good rail disaster. So I did. If you survive to the end, the last word will give you a free lesson in Scottish slang, which may come in useful someday, who knows?

THE GREAT EDINBURGH TRAMS DISASTER

(after William McGonagall)

Though the people of Edinburgh had their qualms

It was decided that they should ride about in tralms

Which would convey them about the town

With half going up and the rest of them going down

From the airport to the town beneath

All the way down to the Port of Leith

So the roadworks began and ripped up the roads

While the people were disturbed by the sound of drilling outside their abodes

And this went on for years and years

But still, the people said, “No tram appears!”

Just perpetual inconvenience and obstruction

Caused by all the digging and construction

Accompanied by runaway expense

That made the costs become truly immense

So that finally, to save some loot

The council decided to shorten the route

So it led from the airport to the centre of town

Which left those in Leith feeling rather let down

But no inquiry could place the blame

For what became known as Edinburgh’s Shame

And still there is no sign of trams

Because Edinburgh Town Council are a load of bams.

GLOSSARY

Bams = idiots

Quote of the Day: The Man in the Bright Nightgown

Fields steers his ferryboat for the Western Lands.

“By the close on 1946, W.C. Fields had spent 14 months, the last several drinking only ginger ale, at Las Encinas Sanitarium in Pasadena. The end came as “The Man in the Bright Nightgown” (as W.C. referred to death) paid his call 12:30 p.m. on Christmas Day, 1946. Fields, a hater of Christmas since age eight, was 66 years old.

“The death certificate lists the cause of death as ‘Cirrhosis of the liver’ (duration, five years), due to ‘chronic alcoholism’ (duration unknown).

“[Fields’ mistress] Carlotta Monti later claimed to have comforted the old man to the very end, and that the dying words of W.C. Fields were, ‘Chinaman…Goddamn the whole frigging world and everyone in it but you, Carlotta.’ Ronald J. Fields is convinced by his own research that Carlotta wasn’t there — she was, he claims, with a lover that Christmas day in Santa Barbara. Only W.C.’s secretary Magda Michael and a nurse were present at the time of W.C.’s death.

“‘He brought his forefinger to his lips to signify quiet,’ wrote Ron Fields, ‘winked, then closed his eyes; and “the Man in the Bright Nightgown” took him away.'”

~ from Hollywood’s Hellfire Club by Gregory William Mank with Charles Heard & Bill Nelson.

Will everyone please stop LYING? Neither of those accounts sounds remotely credible to me. But I love Gregory LaCava’s eulogy for his friend ~

“Bil never really wanted to hurt anybody. He just felt an obligation.” 

Incidentally, fans of Fields’ 1934 classic IT’S A GIFT might like to know that dangerous blind man Mr. Muckle is named after a word in the Scots tongue meaning “very large”. The influence of Scotland on Fields is not too be underrated: not only did he seemingly derive his character name in THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY, The Great McGonigle, from Scotland’s greatest bad poet William Topaz McGonagall, but it was here in Edinburgh that he first tasted strong liquor. So I guess we killed him.