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#(53) BIG MAN
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When John Henry was a little bitty baby, no bigger than the palm of your hand, his mother looked down and she said to him, "gonna be a steel-drivin' man." So pronouncing his death sentence, to break his poor heart in a hopeless contest with a steam drill. A century and more gone by, we still celebrate this glorious failure, because it was not a failure at all. Man vs. machine is really man striving within himself-struggling with his own creations. Father and son, might be a better way of looking at it. The father who is not outshined by his own son has created something lesser than himself, setting in train a decline from the age of gold, to silver, to brass, to iron, and at last to clay. What if the steam drill had not won? |