Toonerville Trolley -- Take Them Teeth o' Yourn Out -- August 3, 2025

San Antonio Light, 04-August-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 06-August-1925

  

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Frying Fish on the Car Stove -- June 5, 2025

Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, 03-June-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- To Kill a Woodpecker -- May 3, 2025

Perth Amboy Evening News, 27-May-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Safety First in the Skipper's Dental Work -- April 5, 2025

Oakland Tribune, 05-April-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains. The Skipper takes advantage of the powerful springs that support the trolley pole.

Oakland Tribune, 26-April-1925

Cities and towns all over the nation claim that their transit systems inspired Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains. Fox himself said that he got the original idea from a decrepit streetcar in the Pelhams. This article claims that a fleet of cars that in Monterey inspired Fox. The cars, which had only one survivor, were bought from San Francisco in the 1890s. I wonder if they were grip cars from cable lines that were shut down or upgraded.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Youngsters Take Advantage -- March 9, 2025

Rutland News, 10-March-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- The Trolley Skipper Himself is the Guilty Party -- February 4, 2025

Birmingham Post, 03-February-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains. Crossword puzzles were a hot topic 100 years ago.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Cross Word Puzzle Fiends -- January 3, 2025

Washington Times, 23-January-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains. Crossword puzzles were a hot topic in 1925.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Watch Yer Step Miss Belcher -- December 3, 2024

Perth Amboy Evening News, 18-November-1924

Christmas is coming. 

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

The Skipper is being extra helpful to his riders.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Heaven Help the Poor Trolley Patron Now! -- November 8, 2024

Washington Times, 08-November-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- During a Presidential Campaign -- September 4, 2024

Spokane Chronicle, 17-September-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains. In light of the current presidential campaign, I thought this was appropriate. 

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Everyone Wants to Sit on the Shady Side -- August 4, 2024

Perth Amboy Evening News, 13-August-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- The Skipper Weighs the Lot on the Cattle Scales -- June 5, 2024

Perth Amboy Evening News, 04-June-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- That Nervy Woodpecker -- May 3, 2024

Perth Amboy Evening News, 27-May-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains. The skipper is upset that a woodpecker has made a home on the trolley but can't do anything about it. I remember when much of the equipment stored outdoors at the Nevada State Railroad Museum was riddled with holes made by woodpeckers.

Victoria Daily Times, 02-May-1924

John T McCutcheon was a cartoonist who was famous for a series of childhood-themed cartoons set in the town of Bird Center. George Fitch wrote a series of magazine stories about "Good Old Siwash College."

Fontaine Fox Gave Up Literature For Cartooning

By WESLEY W. STOUT

Fontaine Fox, whose cartoons will appear in The Victoria Times hereafter, wanted to be a writer, and had no gift for drawing, according to his telling.

Out of high school Fox went to work with high journalistic ideals which survived the better part of a week. He was given what was known In the Louisville Herald city room as the "West End run." That is, he made his headquarters in the reporters' room at City Hall, called on a few undertakers, justices of the peace, and politicians, and waited for telephone calls from the city editor.

In practice he spent his time shooting craps with the opposition reporters. He learned, moreover, that scoops or beats were bad form. At 5 p. m. the reporters divided up their gleanings, each returning to his ffice with the same grist. This left small opportunity for independent effort by an ambitious cub.

Someone told him that a colony of men and women were conducting themselves scandalously on an island in the Ohio River just below the city. Islands being out of bounds, Fox didn't share his tip. Instead he hired a farmer to row him to the island.

On landing Fox said to the farmer: "You better wait for me here. I'm with the Herald, and I'll be going back as soon as I get this story.

A BLOW ON THE JAW

"Oh, you are, are you?" exclaimed a male member of the colony, and hit Fox with force and accuracy on the point of the jaw. This blow knocked Fox 51 per cent of the distance from literature to art.

Fox told the city editor, who told everyone. A political reporter named Peters, with a robust sense of humor had Fox assigned to accompany him to the Churchill Downs racetrack. In the paddock Peters pointed out a large, hook-nosed person and said: "Get a good sketch of him, my boy."

The hook-nosed man was Ed. Corrigan, master of Hawthorne, a notorious camera smasher and sketch artist caner. Fox got in range and began sketching under the impression that Corrigan would be flattered. 

The sketch was almost finished before Corrigan noticed him. The Master of Hawthorne's cane just missed the artist's head. Fox dropped his pencil in getting away, but saved the sketch. Back at the office the sketch was praised as a likeness and the sketcher for his temerity. Fox confined himself thereafter to art.

"As a boy I had sketched as most boys do," he will tell you, "but I had no real gift for drawing and no thought of caricature. Instead, I had a very real desire to write, forced myself later on to a stiff course of reading as a preparation, and worked much harder at it than I ever did at drawing.

"I attracted enough notice after several years to get an offer from the Chicago Post. John T. McCutcheon was in his zenith then, and had begun the revolution of the newspaper cartoon by introducing boy life and other homely topics. To try to follow McCutcheon on boys was thought nothing less than heresy. But McCutcheon's boys were of the village and the farm. I had been brought up on the outskirts of Louisville in a different environment. McCutcheon's boys played on forty-acre fields, mine on vacant lots.

"In Chicago I began to evolve some stock characters, such as 'Thomas Edison Jr.,' 'Sissie' and 'Grandma the Demon Chaperone,' but I wanted new, more and better ones.

Victoria Daily Times, 02-May-1924

THE TOONERVILLE TROLLEY

"The Toonerville Trolley was one of these, and my most successful. It has been done in the movies, will be put into vaudeville next season and has been made into a toy.

"My wife says that I am the original of the Terrible Tempered Mr. Bang.

"The Powerful Katrinka' is a combination of two cooks we had and a 'Dear Old Siwash' story of George Fitch's. One of these cooks, Sally, was a powerful Negress. She saved me more than once from Micky and his gang. The other was as stupid as Sally was strong. While I was trying to put them together, I read Fitch's story of Ole Oleson, the giant Siwash fullback who while at the bottom of a heap of players suddenly had an idea. Why not simply get up the next time and carry both teams and the ball down the field for a goal? Which he did. That suggested making my strong woman a Scandinavian.

Cartoonists are supposed to work by inspiration. I do not, nor any I have known. We get our background from our own lives. In my case the particular idea almost invariably is the result of the impact of two dissociated ideas, produced after much thought and experiment. I first noticed the trick in the stories of O. Henry, who, like a cartoonist, first thought out his climax, then worked back.

Brooklyn Times-Union, 25-May-1924

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- I Got Stuff t'Settle Yer Stummick or I Got Ipecac -- April 4, 2024

Casper Daily Tribune, 01-April-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Des Moines Register, 30-March-1924

I shall have to print this puzzle and complete it. If anyone else does it, I would be happy to see your results.

Des Moines Register, 03-April-1924

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Never Place the Ladder on the Side Against Which the Wind is Blowing -- March 3, 2024

Perth Amboy Evening News, 26-March-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Lewiston Sun-Journal, 25-March-1924

Hamilton Ohio Journal News, 28-March-1924

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- If the Car Jumps the Track -- February 5, 2024

Petaluma Daily Morning Courier, 03-February-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Nowata Daily Star, 24-February-1924

Almost any small or out-of-the-way streetcar operation could be called a Toonerville Trolley.

TOONERVILLE TROLLEY 

SCENE OF WEDDING

Chico, Cal., Feb. 23 -- Harry H Scott, street car motorman, wanted to get married yesterday but he could not leave his car. 

He made an appointment with Judge Clyde Thomas to meet him at the end of the line to tie the knot. Judge Thomas was delayed and Scott could not wait. He took his fiancé and started back on his

run.

Enroute he picked up Justice of the peace J L Barnes and carried him and the girl, Miss Mary 

Partridge, to the other end of the line, where the marriage ceremony was performed. 

The happy pair spent the first day of their honeymoon riding back and forth. 
 

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Never Fails to Excite Comment From Strangers -- January 3, 2023

Perth Amboy Evening News, 29-January-1924

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- A Christmas Eve Accident -- December 4, 2023

Perth Amboy Evening News, 16-December-1923

Christmas is coming. 

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Omaha Bee, 16-December-1923

 

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Toonerville Trolley -- Kicking Power -- November 3, 2023

Perth Amboy Evening News, 13-November-1923

I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Brownsville Herald, 13-November-1923

Several electric Railway operations claimed to be the inspiration of the Toonerville Trolley. I doubt that the five-mile-long Bryan and College Interurban Railway was the real inspiration. 

‘TOONERVILLE TROLLEY'

NOW OUT OF EXISTENCE

-- What was called the original 'Toonerville Trolley,' an interurban line between Bryan, Texas, and College Station, is no more. It has been forced to suspend operations as a result of a motor bus transportation system established by four athletes of A. & M. College, here and the owner, Fred W. Adams, is now engaged in operating a chicken ranch.

The line, which is said to have inspired a now famous cartoon, operated two cars and for a number of years was managed with some measure of success. Students at the local college are not allowed to keep automobiles and the trolley was their only means of transportation to Bryan. The jitney bus, at one time seemed on the point of causing serious difficulties to the line, but the college authorities promulgated a rule against jitneys stopping on the campus, and the trolley continued to operate at a profit.

But it was sever months later that four A. & M. College athletes decided to go into the transportation business on a large scale. They rented four motor busses and announced they would start a bus line between Bryan and College Station. The day came when they did start operation and from then on the business of the interurban line dwindled until Mr. Adams finally decided to abandon the system.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918