"Motorman No. 100 is through! When the East Ithaca car rolls into the barns tonight, Frank Freer, veteran employe[sic] of the local traction company, will have made his last run. ...
There were those days over 30 years ago when he first went on the job. He was a conductor then on the only main trolley line in Ithaca, running from the Lehigh Valley station to College avenue. Only 18 men made up the force, while today nearly triple that number are employed by the company. Out of the original 18, Frank Freer will tell you, with a little catch in his throat, that only two--Bill Brooks, master mechanic at the [car] barns, and Casper Linderberry, transportation superintendent--are on the job today. And those cars of the early days--what crude and unfinished specimens they were.
In the very beginning, even before he was on the line, motorman No. 100 can recall those tiny trolleys which accommodated but four passengers on one side and three on the other with a stove occupying most of the remaining space. Then for years the cars had no vestibule. Many a winter morning the men at the control stood in snow over their shoes, striving to guide their charges safely over the icy rails, their hands so cold that it was necessary to wrap the right wrist about the break to make it work. Newspapers spread under their coats were the only means of keeping the cold out with the exception of frequent periods of vigorous shoveling when the drifts stalled the cars far out in the wilds....
Nor were the cars in those days equal to the modern trolleys in many other respects. Frequently one would jump the track and had to be put back on with the aid of a few stones and a dozen healthy pushes.  ...
As one business man put it recently, 'The first time they rode on Frank's car they became acquainted with him, the second time they would talk to him and the third, they would know him well enough to call him names.' And motorman No. 100 harbors recollections of these bantering sessions which are as happy as any of his life."

"Frank Freer, Motorman No. 100, Quits Tonight After 31 Years of Service; Traveling Public Will Miss Him," Ithaca Journal-News, July 26, 1924, 5.