{"id":2583,"date":"2008-09-30T23:00:27","date_gmt":"2008-10-01T04:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2008-09-30T23:38:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-01T04:38:36","slug":"2583","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"The Age of Steam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roberta<\/a> links to a sweet story<\/a>, whcih reminds me of one of mine own. <\/p>\n

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, I was at a “tourist” destination that had live steam locomotives. It was wintry and cold, and the engineers were sitting at the station waiting for the next go-around, and I sweet talked and bribed them until they let me fire the old girl up for a spin around the little circle of track. <\/p>\n

I was excited and nervous, the engine pulled three little cars and they were empty and the snow fell as I rounded the curves, feeling the heat and muscle of the old iron as it scuttled along the worn rails. The brass handles worn smooth by the rough hands of a hundred odd years of hard men. The cinders and smoke and steam in my face.<\/p>\n

In my life I have done things few people have done. I have steered a plow behind a horse, dug a well, and driven a steam engine. Few people can say that. Fewer still care. But those machines were once the magic muscle that drove this country- without them we might have ended up another soviet, or a bunch of landlocked republics. The iron rail and steam knitted a net across the country that made us one. I’m happy to see the resurgence of rail shipping fueled by- well, by fuel. <\/p>\n

What a sharp memory that is. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roberta links to a sweet story, whcih reminds me of one of mine own. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, I was at a “tourist” destination that had live steam locomotives. It was wintry and cold, and the engineers were sitting at the station waiting for the next go-around, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}