Trailblazers are from Portland, if you ask Milwaukee Bucks and Chicago Bulls fans. In the wider world beyond pro basketball, though, any person or group breaking a path for others to follow confronts multiple crises, often in isolation individually -- even when working closely with others.
(For a memorable example, look up the account of Apollo XI in 1969 as its two crewmen, Neil Armstrong and 'Buzz' Aldrin, hunched inside its foil-thin hull scarcely 100 feet above the lunar surface, looking anxiously for a proper landing site as their Lander gulped precious fuel. Blazing a trail to the Moon's surface for humans, they skimmed past rock outcroppings and sloped craters with little time remaining to choose a lunar destination. Imagine, in some degree which cannot equal the experience first-hand, how tensely those astronauts focused on the tasks at hand, even as their very lives hung in the balance. They focused on the immediate task of finding a safe site because their very lives hung in the balance.)
First times in everything are most difficult. The first time for a PCC streetcar in Kenosha, nearly fifty years after its manufacture and almost seventy years since its original design, has been difficult.
Digital image provided by Randall Thornton
Certainly
Car 4610, wearing its original number and freshly painted in its
Toronto colors, blazed a trail into Kenosha upon its delivery
in May, 2000. By mid-month, fully 30 days before the ribbon-cutting
ceremony, the classic shape of this example of a Presidents Conference
Car was drawing curious faces to the windows outside its new shelter.
Critics outnumbered the curious, however. Sharp critics. "How much more idiotic can the city of Kenosha get?" demanded one letter published by the Kenosha News, launching into a tirade against "throw[ing] away millions of dollars for a Toonerville trolley."
Detractors gained some added -- though unfounded
-- rationale for complaining that streetcars "will serve
no reasonable purpose" due to the absence of any destinations
within Harborpark. Condominiums and small retail sites are planned,
and Kenosha Public Museum is abuilding -- and condo purchasers
going to the on-site office are among PCC riders. But those prospective
destinations were of no interest to critics as Car 4610 began
regular service in mid-June.
By Independence Day, July Fourth, however, detractors already faced a rising tide of curiosity among Kenoshans. Afternoon events along the lakefront north of Harborpark soon swelled onto the newly landscaped arceage where the Toronto and Chicago streetcars (identifying only their color schemes, not original owners) circulated with growing numbers of riders. By late afternoon, each departure from the new Transit Center at 54th Street and Eighth Avenue carried a standing-room-only human cargo.
As supper hour waned toward nightfall, spectators staked claims to prime real estate in preparation for the after-dark fireworks. Fully two hours before the sky spectacle, roads leading to the lakefront coped with bumper-to-bumper traffic and wave after wave of families toted lawn chairs and blankets to the wide open spaces around the partially-built museum. Each streetcar conveyed more spectators into Harborpark, then all ceased at nightfall, resuming for almost an hour after the fireworks concluded to convey weary visitors back westward to motor vehicles parked closer to urban arterials, where parking is routinely positioned for existing workday destinations, such as the county buildings and the Metra station.
