It's just a matter of time. One of these not-so-fine mornings, San Francisco will wake up and discover that the manic-progressives of public transportation have finally achieved their secret ambition.

There will be a strange new silence in the air. The slotted streets will seem uncomfortably quiet. And the people will look at each other in sudden consternation and gasp: "The cable cars—our cable cars—they've taken them away!"

It's inevitable—as inevitable as that bridges should replace ferryboats and that busses should supplant streetcars. Once there were a dozen cable car lines in San Francisco. Now there are three, attacked from all sides by those clear-eyed thinkers who point out righteously that the cables lose money—while closing those clear eyes to the fact that the hinky-dinkies are worth millions annually in publicity, good will, and the kind of unique color that is disappearing all too fast from "different" San Francisco.

So, while there is still time, let's take a ride on a Powell Street cable. Not the last ride, to be sure, but closer to the last ride than I care to think. For, as I was saying, it's just a matter of time.

The conductor sings out:

"Fares, please, fares . . . Wanna transfer? . . . No, lady, you can't stand on the outside step. Men only . . . 'Board!"

Wonderful, the way the gripman climbs aboard the Powell cable after it has been swung around on the turntable, with all hands helping. The passengers are clinging to the steps and the seats, awaiting the magic moment, and then he strides majestically to the grips—like a pilot climbing into his airliner . . . And there's always the tourist staring in disbelief from the sidewalk by the Bank of America, while a native knowingly points out the grip and the slot and dispenses clouds of misinformation ("That gizmo there goes down through the gimmick and grabs the dingbat, you follow me?) . . . The women tuck their skirts under their legs, the gripman clangs a final warning clang-clang, and we're off with a jerk (how do you do) past the corner sidewalk stand whose proud address is No. 1 Powell.

("Let 'em through, let 'em through . . . Plenty of room inside, don't shove . . . That's right, lady, you transfer to the B car at Geary" . . .)

There's something open, aboveboard, and pleasantly small-townish about a cable car . . . You can smell the food being cooked in Moar's and Bernstein's and Bunny's and Omar Khayyam's. You can wave, Main Street style, as you bounce past Saloonkeepers Baron Long and Harry Walsh on one side, and Florist George Arabian and Fight Promoter Bennie Ford on the other, mixing with the broken-nosers and the gamblers and the town characters who give Powell Street its Runyonesque flavor. You can stare smack into a hotel lobby, where a lounger sits and stares right back at you. And if Lefty O'Doul's newest Cadillac is parked in front of the saloon that bears his name, you can lean out daringly from the bottom step and take a mock kick at it.

Then there's the St. Francis's distinguished doorman, blowing his taxi whistle in the middle of the street and almost getting clipped as you rattle past. And the Gray Line busses, loading up with sightseers who look out of their windows at their first strange sight—you on a cable car . . . You turn and glance inside the car at the people sitting behind the glass doors. You don't see anybody that you recognize—and you reflect for a second on the old tale that these aren't real people who sit inside of a cable car; they're built in at the factory!

("Coming out, let 'em out! . . . Give that lady a hand with the baby . . . Awright, fasten your safety belts, we're going up . . . Whatzat? Nnno, bud, you don't get no flying pay on THIS trip" . . .)

The University of California Extension—its campus a slanty sidewalk where the students stand, with one leg longer than the other, and puff cigarettes and flip the butts at the slot . . . Sears, of tiny pancake fame, and the Family Club, with its prim row of clipped trees starting with precision at one boundary of its property and marching to the other—you count them as you roll by . . . And always, the intriguing windows of apartment houses passing right in front of your nose, making you a Peeping Tom whether you like it or not, and you're afraid you do, a little . . . The welcome plateaux of Bush and Pine, where the phalanxes of autos, four abreast, stop respectfully because they know that a cable car can't; they don't need that automatic signal to tell them that the immovable object is coming with irresistible force, and a bell to match . . . The gripman playfully raps out the rhythm of "California, Here I Come," and you're at—

"California Street . . . Fairmont, Top o' the Mark . . . Transfer to the Cal cable . . . How many transfers do you WANT, lady? . . .)

One of the nicer things about a cable car is that everybody helps drive it. When it pauses for a double-parked auto, the guys on the lower step lean out, survey the clearance with gimlet eyes, and coach: "O.K., O.K., yer gonna make it—all clear" . . . Then the slow dip down the other slope of Nob Hill, the smart apartment houses melting into not-so-smart ones, the French laundries and the Chinese, and snifter of garlic from nearby North Beach at Jackson—where the conductors get off to throw the hand switch and then leap back on as the car rattles, with the verve of a roller coaster, around the famed "'Kout-fer-da-curve!" turn . . . Jackson Street, with its minor miracle of two slots and three rails so that two cars can use it by sharing the mddle rail—and suddenly you "'Kout!" again, this time into Mason Street, and you notice the dead rails of long-dead cable lines, indecently buried under pavement that covers its steel bones only in patches.

("Yeah, we stop near Fisherman's Wharf, Mister . . . Huh? Sure, you can come back on the Hyde Street line—just a couple of blocks over . . . Awright, here we go, over the top" . . .)

At Vallejo Street, you suddenly nose into space and then start down—frighteningly fast at first, until the grip takes hold . . . Ahead, the Bay and the stacks of streamers nuzzling up to the piers near Fisherman's Wharf . . . The big, raw hill near Green Street, with its hundreds of wooden steps going up and up while the tourists follow them with their eyes as far as they can, and then stop, out of breath . . . The swing into Columbus Avenue at Mason, where, for a block, you'll find four streetcar tracks, just like Market used to be; past the big night clubs and the little bars, and then the flat home stretch along Taylor Street and the final, slow clatter onto "the forgotten turntable" at the corner of the Bay.

Grizzled Gripman Earl Hugh takes off his gloves, leans on his lever and grunts: "Me? I been running one of these things for thirty years. Started out on the old Castro line, ran into the Mission. Great, those Mission people. Why, the women used to jump on and off while we were running, with their arms full of babies and bundles. Yeah—I ws on the Pacific Heights run, too. Women sure are different out there. Useta get sore if you didn't let 'em off right at their doorstep. What'll I do if they take these cable cars off? I know what I'll do. I'll get out of the transportation business!"

And so will thousands of other San Franciscans who feel exactly the way he does—that the cable cars are their personal transportation system, unique and irreplaceable. They'll get to work some other way, course, but it won't be the same. Friedel Klussmann, head of the Citizens Committee to Save the Cable Cars, puts it this way: "How can you fall in love with a bus?"