IT was Christmas Eve, 19--. The slump which followed the early post-war boom had thrown thousands of people on the 'dole'. Some of them stood on the kerb near the Black Horse in silence. Their dejected stance, their threadbare clothes, their pinched and drawn faces told the grim story of hopelessness and despair.

The tram clanked noisily over the points and came to rest at the terminus. I towed round the trolly-rope to the return wire and was standing idly behind the tram waiting in the cold for the minute of departure.

Out of the darkness there came towards me two tiny figures, a girl and a boy, both ragged, but their lovely faces smiling, confidently. The tram was filling up.

"Can we sing them a carol inside, Mister?" asked the boy.

Within a minute the passengers were singling lustily a well-known Christmas hymn, with the children's voices adding harmony. As I stepped aboard to ring off the tram, I caught a glimpse of the boy, his eyes gleaming, his poor, limp cap weighted down with the coppers it held.

Both children stepped off the platform. The little girl, with tears in her eyes, told me: "It's all fer Dad. He's on t' dole. Bin a soldier, too.

"Thanks, Mister," they shouted to me as the tram started. "Merry Christmas."

What did it matter if we were five minutes' late and that there would be some awkward explaining to do at the other end. Wasn't it Christmas Eve?

***

I WONDER if a present-day school teacher remembers a Christmas Eve years ago when, as a boy who seemed to be shivering with the cold himself, he boarded my tram at the Market and handed me two bags of hot potatoes with -- "Here y' are, Mister, one fer t' driver. Ye'r cowd aren't ye?"

***

THEN there was that other Farnworthian who, one Christmas Eve during the war, said to me as she saw the big clockwork motor crushed to rubbish beneath the wheels of an oncoming lorry as it fell from my swaying car -- "There goes my club checks. Not paid for yet. He'll have to have a tanner 'un now, bless him!"

***

THE CHRISTMAS spirit was always in evidence among Farnworth people. They were the kind who always seemed to remember that such people as I would be away from my own family rejoicing on Christmas Day. Some of them were good enough to play Santa Claus to me. One, a poor, white-haired lady, told me a week before Christmas that the scarf she was knitting to keep me warm at the back of the tram was nearly finished. She passed away that Christmas Eve with her task uncompleted.

Then there was that crippled shopkeeper, 'Jim' Briggs, always a familiar figure in Farnworth who invariably waited at the Black Horse each Christmas Eve, no matter how bad the weather, to play Santa to every driver and conductor on the road. There were others, too, equally generous, such as smiling Bert Whittaker, the happy grocer, known to all. The man who would throw that chunk of boiled ham on his scales if you asked him for two ounces, and would say -- "Is that enough?"

Tom Morton, in the Temperance Bar, was another generous soul. Remember him? He was the man who used to see you safely away on those coaches to the seaside each year (but seldom went himself) who always had a special brew for such as I on Christmas Eve.

***

THERE was a poor, blind man who tried so hard one Christmas Eve to give me a half-crown 'tip', boarding my bus no fewer than four times and at last giving it up when he discovered on each occasion that the coin had found its way back into his pocket.

***

IT'S Christmas Eve again. Some Farnworth parents taking home those precious parcels of gifts for their kiddies may not remember me. But I remember them, and I remember their parents, riding home on my tram with just such toys as can still be seen today.

I have seen them grow up from children to parenthood. Some of them still remember me as, clasping the hand of their little boy or girl, they say to me -- "It's a long time since you lifted me off the tram at school."

Some ask me if I ever miss the opportunities of visiting the theatre or the cinemas. Of course I don't. Don't I see the real love scenes, and don't I feel the true drama about the lives of people on the bus? And it doesn't cost me a penny!

Memory's lane extends from Moses Gate to the Black Horse. As, tomorrow night, I travel down Market-st. for the last time as a conductor, I shall meet again in spirit all the people who have made my Christmas Eves so colourful and wonderful. At Gladstone-rd. I shall be hearing 'Jim' Briggs again, and, as I help him from my platform, he'll be saying -- "God bless you, laddie. Merry Christmas!"

Through the night air once again will come the sound of carols, an echo of that sung by the little boy and girl who tried to give poor old out-of-work Dad a Merry Christmas.

And I shall watch 'Jim' safely across the road ...