Rail Daze Stories - The Bump

Bumpity-bump boys!...all the way to Montreal!...bumpity-bump!

More truth in that than he knew back then...bumpity-bump!

Blunt end of sixty-foot rail, swung and slammed rhythmically,

Bumpity-bump boys!...twenty pairs of rail tongs, forty men,

some barely...swing in cadence to Roger's exhortations...bumpity-bump!

Violent gong marking each moment of inertia...bumpity-bump!

Blunt end of three-quarter mile ribbon steel, linked to Canada,

absorbing each committed swing...bumpity-bump boys!

refusing to relinquish the half-inch necessary to correct the overlap

and close the joint...bumpity-bump!

Racing against the hundred car freight bearing down unstoppable

Bumpity-bump boys!...all the way to Montreal!...bumpity-bump!

A greenie lets slip his grip...just for an instant...

Could have been the sweat, running in rivers down his arms,

or simply a momentary lapse in awareness...bumpity-bump boys!

Tongs slip and lock past the reach of the next swing...bumpity-bump!

"Rag doll!" the chant rings out derisively, as the body flails out of sync

Yanked from his boots, crashing uncontrolled against his neighbour

He and his opposite propelled by thirty-eight...bumpity-bump!

Let go you fool! curses the old rummy whose upended face

bounces into view...bumpity-bump!

You see, that's the funny thing about it...

How the natural reaction in that instant of the slip...bumpity-bump!

is to tighten the clamp of the tongs to the rail...but of course, too late,

That only seals your fate...bumpity-bump boys!...all the way to Montreal!

By Marc Charette

From: Canada

Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/marc.charette.357