l was early and my train to
Prague was late so I sat on a bench and enjoyed a 9 a.m. 12-degree bottled
Dacicky beer. Nothing unusual about that--beer here is a breakfast drink,
if not a meal. Then something unusual happened--a big old blue locomotive
came huffing and wheezing into the station, trailing a long plume of black
smoke from its coal-burning stack. It wasn't that old, 1930s maybe, the height
of
steam
engines, just on the cusp of the diesels that would take its place. I
knew it was unusual and wasted no time going over to get closer to it. Most
other commuters played it cool until a lot of train workers started coming
over to investigate, looking it over as if they understood, taking pictures
and laughing at the luck of seeing a museum piece in action. Then came the
stars of the day,
men in coveralls
bearing large oil cans who knew just where to stick the spouts to pump
out some lube and send it on its way. As the locomotive idled it seemed to
breathe, a very regular cycle, almost human, predictable, reminder of a time
when machines more closely resembled people. |
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