Thursday, November 18, 2004, 4:18pm
Thursday, November 18, 2004, 4:18pm
Above the grayness of a lingering overcast a theoretical sun stands not far above its theoretical horizon as we approach another theoretical winter solstice. On this darkening day, the daylight does not simply end. Instead it leaks away until I forget there ever was any daylight at all. And yet this mordant pall is still the Garden of Eden compared to netherworld catacombs beneath Copley Square and the Prudential Center at Back Bay Station.
4:25pm and the day is almost gone! Wasn’t I wearing shorts a few weeks ago?
I notice a six story brick apartment house in the fading light like so many others in the city. Drawing my eye in particular – the front façade reveals a crest of pointed silhouettes evenly spaced perhaps a foot tall forming an ill-fitting crown. In a larger way they resemble the pointy stones I’ve seen embedded into tall suburban retaining walls. These I’m told are used to discourage the loitering of larger birds and smaller children. Along the lower ledges of the city, pigeons loiter head-under-wing in the sunlight like mummified gargoyles. Most other birds flit here and there, and the pointy stones are instead more likely aimed at arrogant and lazy seagulls seen throughout the city atop any crowning roof line with a clear view to passing food – blithely crapping onto the sidewalk below until some morsel comes along to draw their attention.
Such pointed features are not a new idea. I recall that Jenny and I specifically built her tree fort railings with sharpened corners to discourage kids from roosting. I didn’t want her or anyone else falling into the pond or onto the old field stone retaining wall 12 feet below. We can do only what we can do, and I had no way of knowing how, just three months later, a loose stone from a different field stone wall would take her life in Hopkinton.
A mile or two west of the Allston yards the train lurches to the side as we switch to the north set of tracks. Picking up speed again we soon crisscross under the Pike rolling along at full bore – to borrow an old steam engine expression.
Through Newton much of the tracks are lower than street level and from this single-decker car I mostly see the blackness of hand-fitted granite retaining walls getting blacker by the minute in a failing gloom broken only by the occasional street lamp or scattered debris from long forgotten fast food litter. In Europe many of the rail lines are designed with a scenic component. On the Worcester Line any endearing scenery is entirely a matter of happenstance.
Near Newton Lower Falls we part company with the Pike passing briskly over Route 128, a highway tonight packed with traffic and hardly moving in either direction. There are no north-south commuter rails in the suburbs west of Boston, so those poor bastards on Route 128 have no choice except to work somewhere else.
If there is a special hell set aside for misbehaving civil engineers and other highway designers and planners it will be to spend an eternity stuck in traffic on Route 128.
