Preface To Subways: The First Time I Ever Rode In A Subway

I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, which didn't have much of a mass transit system during my childhood.  It probably had a trolley system early in the twentieth century, but (I just discovered reading this article) it had only something called the Dallas Transit System until the creation of DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) in the early 80s.  I was in high school when the yellow DART buses appeared around town, but it was widely scorned among my family & friends, with stories of empty buses parked outside of routes for the drivers to nap.  (There was probably also some racism & class insecurity involved - as minorities too the bus - a sign perhaps that you were poor to afford your own means of transportation.)  I had no previous experience in riding buses - my mother did not even want us to ride the school bus - & DART made it hard to do, since their bus stop signs did not (until the 1990s) tell you which bus stopped there.

I was very surprised to find out a girl I was sweet on took the bus to her after-school job.  I asked her how she knew which bus to take, & she produced pamphlets.  I remember asking, "How did you get those?"  At the supermarket, it turned out.  Who know?  Besides her, I mean.

I had of course read about subways, & seen them in movies, but not being terribly well-travelled & especially not ever visiting the American north-east, there would be no chance to ride a real subway until after college.

When was my first subway experience?  Technically, I rode a train that went underground in May of 1992 when I was in Germany, but it wasn't a proper subway.  The first real subway I rode was later that summer in Mexico City.  It was especially charmed by the color coding - it made everything so easy!

I have loved subways ever since & would require every medium-to-large-sized city build one if I were in charge.

Interestingly, I didn't ride in the New York subway until 2004.  So my first experience with subways - & trains as mass transit - happened in two countries outside my own.  & my first American subway experience happened eight years after that.