The Trainman's Lament

[mouser.livejournal.com]

It's not my job to run the train;
the whistle I can't blow.
It's not my job to say how far
the trains allowed to go.
It's not my job to pick the stops,
nor call out each new town
It's not my job to speed it up,
nor yet to slow it down.
It's not my place to shoot off steam
nor even clang the bell.
But let the damn thing jump the track
and see who catches hell!
*author unknown*

Comments

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

truth there my son... sterling truth

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

My dad spent most of his adult life working for the Santa Fe railroad. At the time of his retirement, he was a Superintendent of Operations for the US Southwest Region, and had a plaque with that poem on it.

I remember it to this day only because the plaque had a photo of an orangutan in an old-fashioned striped engineer's cap, and I always thought it was the greatest thing in the world as a kid.