The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so beware of anyone offering you a good idea, some sage advice, or the solution to your problem. Beware of help. The first to jump into the ring are your parents. They want the best for you, but look at them. Did they manage the best for themselves? Look around at other families. How many kids survive their childhoods unscathed? As Philip Larkin wrote, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.”
But even before parents get going on their offspring, the matter of genetics has loaded the dice against many of us. Not only through inherited characteristics, such as a short stature or a crooked spine, but inherited tendencies, such as moodiness or impatience.
Others seem blessed, and the gods smile on them, not just in the early spring of their lives but through all the seasons. By the time these children are adults, they’ve proven themselves a credit to their families. Both the progeny and the progenitor bask in the golden light. “A chip off the old block” is an easy compliment that comes close to self-congratulation. You begin to believe they must deserve their good fortune. How else can you explain it? The sullen sufferer who has endured bad genes or bad parenting watches from under knit brows as others reap compliments and rewards. How does it go so well for one and so badly for another?
That last was my thought as I stood inside the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Durango, Colorado. I wanted to shake my head in sad recognition of life’s unfair distribution of gifts and of the lives led in consequence. On one side of me was a train car for transporting crews that worked for the railroad, either repairing tracks or cleaning up after wrecks. On the other side was the ornate coach that ferried the rich and privileged from one stop to another on their voyage of pleasure.
Inside the car for workers, called the Immigrant Coach 460, I admired the wooden beds that folded down from the sides of the wagon but wondered at the length, which seemed more suited to children than adults. In the kitchen, the counter and the tin sink were only as high as my mid-thigh. “I’d break my back washing dishes in that sink,” I commented to my companion. He suggested that the workers might have been Chinese immigrants, probably from southern China, and were likely to have suffered nutritional deficiencies. Malnutrition can cost a person inches in height if coinciding with a growth spurt. Then we turned to the General Palmer Coach. A sign stated that the car was built in 1880 and had been restored to the original interior, with the front seating area, a small dining area, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a kitchen suitable for a caterer’s use. Museum visitors were allowed to wander through the car that once bore workers, but the door to the luxury carriage was locked. We settled for gazing in through the window.
“In Spain,” I commented, “there are luxury trains that, for an arm and a leg, will take you on a tour of the country.” Three options exist: the Transcantábrico Gran Lujo across the northern part of the country, the Al-Andalus Tren through southern Spain, and the Expreso de la Robla through Castilla and León. Depending on the route, the trips take between five and 10 days.
“In America,” my friend told me, “you can hitch a private railroad car to an Amtrak train, and cross the country, sitting on the porch of your own carriage.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said, and told me of a now-defunct magazine, Private Varnish, about these luxury railroad cars. Private varnish is an insider’s term for a private railroad car.
Later, I found a train blogger commenting on PV, shorthand for private varnish. The restored cars are “so damn beautiful and so … well, so classic … that you almost want to weep from the pleasure you get just gazing at them.” The writer continued. “And, of course, you can’t help fantasizing about what it must be like to actually travel in one of those beauties.”
How many workers on the crew car ever got a peek at how their luckier brethren lived? Did they weep at the beauty or the unfairness? As I say, I’d wanted to shake my head at life’s inequalities. But I had no time: my friend and I were leaving the museum to go on to the next treat in our full weekend of rest and relaxation. That evening—when we took a seat at the bar in the Diamond Belle Saloon, in the town’s oldest hotel—was also not a good time for lamenting hard lives and difficult destinies. It wouldn’t look good to be crying into a chocolate martini. You wouldn’t want to ruin the mood, and you didn’t want to appear ungrateful. Or worse, hypocritical. “Nothing you can do anyway. Might as well enjoy your drink.” Anyone trying to help would tell you so. Live and let live. Of course you listen to that inner voice. It is, after all, good advice. So you enjoy your drink and let your fellows enjoy theirs. The road to hell? Surely that’s not where such pleasant people are bound?
