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This is the way I heard it.

The grease man dragged his shovel across the wooden floor and stabbed it into the towering

pile of coal with a satisfying crunch.

Technically, this was a job for the fireman, but the grease man wasn't want to complain.

In 1869, complaining on the Michigan Central Railroad, got you nowhere.

Lifting with his legs and pivoting with his hips, the grease man sent the anthracite

sailing through the air with the flip of the wrist and watched it vanish into the furnace's

gaping mouth. The sounds of his work kept time with the tempo of the train that swayed beneath him,

a steady cissophian rhythm propelling man and machine through America's heartland.

As he shoveled, it occurred to him that his body worked a lot like the engine he fed.

The more fuel he gave it, the faster it would go.

But when the train quickly slowed and ground to a sudden halt,

for the fifth time that day, the grease man stopped thinking in metaphors and prepared himself

...