I started running down this track a few days ago when I looked closely at the picture on my wall entitled "Main Street, N.D." Speaking of a track, I'm reminded of how close the railroad track ran closely parallel to the main street, just out of the picture. As a young boy I remember seeing the steam locomotives pulling freight and passenger cars and blowing heavy clouds of black smoke and white steam as they rumbled along. A local section crew was employed maintaining the track and in the depot Earl Farnham served as the depot agent presiding over the freight and passengers coming and going through his world. I'm even further reminded of a little passenger train that ran which we called "The Galloping Goose," and I remember still another fact: I rode its last run in 1961 when I went to Fargo to make a bus connection to return to UND in Grand Forks. Only a few passengers rode with me that day. There was no fanfare for the event when we arrived in Fargo. It just quit running, period. No profit, no service, it had run its useful life.
What actually prompted me to look deeply into that picture of main street was after I had re-read Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem "The Deacon's Masterpiece or That Wonderful One-Hoss Shay." The buggy, or chaise, that he wrote of must have been similar to the buggies in my picture, and I wanted to have a look. An avowed Unitarian, Holmes wrote this in 1858 to poke fun at the Puritan theology of the time. An internet search turned up many discussions of the poem that begins
"Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then of a sudden it..."
The deacon of the church built it so it wouldn't break down. He built it from the very best of materials so that each part was as strong as every other part. In Holmes' view, the shay works well until it ... went to pieces all at once, and nothing first, - just as bubbles do when they burst. It was built in such a logical way that it ran a hundred years to a day.
Holmes' humorous indictment of religion was adopted by the field of economics, too. The term "one-hoss shay" is used to describe a model of depreciation, in which a durable product delivers the same services throughout its lifetime before failing with zero scrap value.
I thought long and decided there is another application, too, for the little towns and schools that run along quite nicely for long periods of time, and then, by the time we realize what's happening, we have nothing left except the memories.
