Instructions from the manual
Could not have been much more plain
The blues are still required
The blues are still required again
Past territorial piss-posts
Past whispers in the closet
Past screamin’ from the rooftops
We live to survive our paradoxes
We live to survive our paradoxes
We live to survive our paradoxes
Men hear of the secret
They pass in upholstered silence
They only exist in crisis
They only exist in silence
Past territorial piss-posts
Past whispers in the closet
Past screamin’ from the rooftops
We live to survive our paradoxes
We live to survive our paradoxes
We live to survive our paradoxes
**********
Well, I had my first derailment today. 
Now before you all freak yourselves into a stupor and I have to scrape
the lot of you off the ceiling with a putty knife, let me clarify this
one thing for you. No railroader’s career is complete without at least
one derailment. They happen every day, equipment gets damaged, people
get hurt, and contents get messed up to the stars. But this car was
empty, it was not severely damaged (just got a little dislocated from
one of its trucks), and NO DAMN BODY GOT HURT. Minor incidents like
these are how we railroaders learn to prevent them from happening again
with more unfortunate results. Can you all live with that? Good. Thank
you.
In case you’re wondering, we were about to pull a few cars out of a
sidetrack, and were doing a brake check. I radioed the engineer to
apply brakes – and lo and behold, the train started moving. By the time
I called for an emergency stop, WHAMMO! The last car had gone
squeeching off the end of the track. Don’t ask me why he started moving
the train when I told him to apply brakes, especially since he
maintains that I told him to move. Anyway, this has happened before -
and in addition to the consequences stated above, my boss doesn’t
consider it that big of a deal. Which was a bloody relief, I might
add…Still, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Not only do things
like this happen every day, but it could have been much, much worse. I
mean, look what happened in California yesterday. I’ve learned
something from it, and so has the engineer (who, by the way, has been
doing this for over forty years).
I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, and granted, I’d have
preferred it to happen later instead of sooner. 
But there’s no
need for a frenetic fuss over it – it’s happened, it’s over, and
everybody’s moving on (as soon as we get that car back on the rails,
that is). So relax and have a pickle. There are other great things out
there that are vastly more worthy of your attention.
