"Interurban Queen" (1968/1970) and "Assault on Fat Mountain" (1973/1976)
Updated: 1 day ago
What makes “Interurban Queen” so remarkable, though, is the incredible tonal balance with which Lafferty handles the two sides of this question: I cannot tell, even with inside knowledge of Lafferty's personal politics, where his sympathies lie — probably a historic first in s-f of this type. — Sheryl Smith, "Lafferty’s Short Stories: Some Mystagogic Goshwow"
A few times in his work, Lafferty mentions the Toonerville Trolley from a wonderful comic strip that I wasn’t familiar with until I came across his references to it. Created by Fontaine Fox (1884-1964), it ran from 1908 to 1955. Its real title is Toonerville Folks, but it’s best known as Toonerville Trolley, which even inspired a few real-world namesakes, one of which ran in my town. Not just in my town, in fact, but also near my neighborhood of West University Place, which is fun.
Toonerville Folks was a single-panel gag strip about the residents of a small town. Its most famous character was the trolley itself, operated by the Skipper, a corncob pipe smoker with a walrus moustache. The trolley was unreliable, often breaking down or running late, and much of the humor came from the Skipper’s hijinks. I recommend it highly to Lafferty fans.
I was thinking about Toonerville again today because I reread “Interurban Queen,” this time in the new Centipede Press volume. It’s one of my favorite Lafferty stories. He moves in and out of his alternative history pastoral rhapsodies, the way he does in the underread and underappreciated “Assault on Fat Mountain.”
The Saturday riders passed a roadway restaurant with its tables out under the leaves and under a little rock overhang. A one-meter-high waterfall gushed through the middle of the establishment, and a two-meter-long bridge of set shale stone led to the kitchen. Then they broke onto view after never-tiring view of the rich and varied quasiurbia. The roadway forms, the fringe farms, the berry patches! In their seasons: Juneberries, huckleberries, blueberries, dewberries, elderberries, highbush cranberries, red raspberries, boysenberries, loganberries, nine kinds of blackberries, strawberries, greenberries. "Interurban Queen"
“They are a people in the rich heartland (which should be our own heartland) enjoying dew-berries and blueberries, June berries and huckleberries and elderberries, blackberries and gooseberries; enjoying hazelnuts and butternuts; pleasuring themselves on tomatoes and musk melons; the rich Appalachians! Consider their crackerjack factories in Council Bluffs and their alligator farms in Memphis! Regard the wealth of their windmill-makers and rubber-plant growers. Be amazed at the daily wages of their iron-makers and cucumber pickers. Do you know that even the poor people in Appalachia have pumpkin every day?” "Assault on Fat Mountain"
In both "Assault on Fat Mountain" and "Interurban Queen," the pastoral settings are tendentiously uchronic. They are edenic visions of cultivated nature outside history, but only because of breaks within them. These landscapes motivate the central confrontation in each story.
"Assault on Fat Mountain" forks off from 1788, when the fate of the frontier state of Franklin hinged on a coin toss. It imagines an alternate history in which Appalachia grows into a prosperous fat nation, overflowing with fertile valleys, vineyards, and farms. Abundance becomes the source of envy when poorer lowland neighbors, resentful of Appalachia’s plenty, rise in revolt.
"Interurban Queen" forks off around 1907, the year of Oklahoma statehood, when its main character, Charles Archer, must decide whether to invest in rubber for automobiles or in the interurban trolley system. His decision sets up an ironic premise for the pastoral future. Charles Archer invested in the non-pastoral one. In this future, orchards, waterways, and quasi-rural harmony thrive under a network of trolleys, while automobiles, outlawed but never entirely gone, are forces of social disruption but also coefficients of freedom.
Both stories reject versions of American history, and, by extension, all history, that treat it as a tale of unilinear progress: the point Sheryl Smith brilliantly honed in on forty years ago. I would only add that Lafferty’s political temperament does show, though not at the level of the politically programmatic; each story follows from the conservative suspicion that there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
In school, I had learned about the proposal for the State of Franklin. But before I learned about the Toonerville Trolley or read "Interurban Queen," I knew very little about interurban railways. In the early 20th century, electric interurban railways flourished across the United States. Entrepreneurs rapidly built inter-city trolley lines. More than 5,000 miles of track were laid between 1901 and 1904 alone, which is a little mind-boggling. Construction peaked again from 1905 to 1908, adding another 4,000 miles. By 1916, the U.S. had over 15,500 miles of interurban tracks, an astounding rise from virtually none in 1890.
These electric cars, powered by overhead wires, were cleaner and quieter than steam locomotives. They offered frequent, affordable service for commuters and farmers alike. Tracks often ran down main streets and country roads. They knitted together a ribbon network of regional transit. In Oklahoma, for example, interurbans connected Oklahoma City to Guthrie, Norman, El Reno, and more, starting around 1903. Smaller towns like Ardmore, Enid, and Muskogee had interurban lines by the 1910s. At their height, interurbans carried passengers, freight, and even served as moving billboards for local businesses, all things that are the bread and butter of the gags in The Toonerville Folks.
The explosion started to change in the 1910s. Lines struggled to turn a profit and faced rising competition. The growth of the automobile industry and road improvements in the 1920s siphoned away riders. By the 1930s, the trolley lines were being abandoned in large numbers. National interurban mileage fell from its 1916 peak to just 1,500 miles by 1950, and barely 200 miles by 1959.
In Oklahoma, the last interurban trips ran in the 1940s and 1950s. Tulsa’s Sand Springs line lasted until 1955, and one electric line survived until 1960, right when Lafferty was about to become the Lafferty we know. The Oklahoma trolleys themselves were a relic that didn’t make it into Flatland.
