Destination Clearwater: The Jolley Trolley

There’s something soothing about the bus.

I love the way it removes the need for me to think and lets me relax while I get where I think I need to be. Today I rode the Jolley Trolley, the first time in years.

When we first moved to Clearwater my mom took me for a trolley ride on the Jolley Trolley. Now, we moved to Clearwater from right outside New York City, so you can only imagine what a joy it was for my mother to travel 1,300 miles to ride a bus.

Except this wasn’t any old city bus; it was (and is) a trolley. The , no less. It had nifty wooden benches that shone with polish and lacquer and open spaces where most buses had windows. I was 7 and it was quite the treat.

The story goes (although I don’t remember) that as we rode around town on the back curvy bench, a man missed the trolley at one of the stops. He ran to catch it but the driver either didn’t see him or didn’t care. I cried because he couldn’t get on the trolley. I guess I couldn’t imagine a fate worse than not being on the trolley if you wanted to be.

Back on the trolley today – the first time since then that I’ve ridden the route – I’m a little more zen about people missing the trolley. I understand that another will follow and it isn’t the end of the world if you miss it. Instead of worrying about timetables and trolleys, I look around at the world outside my space-where-the-window-should-be.

The beach is a whole new place when you’re not the one trying to navigate the roundabout. I can barely see the traffic to concern myself with it. The best part of the ride, though, is the north beach sector. In high school one of my best friends lived on Mandalay and I went to her place on the regular, but today I’m seeing parts of the beach I’ve never seen before.

The trolley chugs past Bay Esplanade and winds around a few other back roads before I realize I have driven these roads – I’ve just never paid attention before.

As we drive these newly unfamiliar roads I see a side of the beach I haven’t seen in years. In many ways, the north beach neighborhoods are more “Old Florida” than any other area. I long ago wrote off the north end to high rises, but today I see leaded glass windows on old style beach cottages, framed with shocks of purple bougainvillea and pampas grass.

The a-frame bungalows, surrounded by wispy vegetation and cuddled next to old-style hotel apartments remind me of Florida from 1980, when we first moved here and everything was beachy and easy and small.

In a phrase, that’s what I found on the Jolley Trolley today: small Clearwater.

For once I am looking and not seeing the Pepto-Bismol pink hotel that makes me choke when I see it; I see neither the roundabout nor the high rises. Instead, I see a small beach, with houses and families and a quieter lifestyle by the sea.

It’s as though I’ve boarded a time machine and gone back in time, once again seeing the Clearwater Beach I love.

And I saw it all from the Jolley Trolley.