The last ride of the morning: warm-up · Grade 6

The passage and its 4 questions

Directions: Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions in full sentences.

• Every morning at seven, Tomás rode the old funicular up the hill above Valparaíso with his grandfather, Don Ernesto, who had run the little wooden car for forty-one years. The car rattled up its steep track like a tired goat, and through its windows the harbor spread out below: cranes, container ships and painted houses tumbling down to the sea.
• Lately, though, Tomás had noticed small things. His grandfather polished the brass bell beside the controls a little longer each day. Twice that week he had stood at the top station without moving, staring at the water as if he were memorizing it.
• Tomás remembered his very first ride, when he was five. He had pressed his face into his grandfather's jacket, sure that the car would slide all the way back down the mountain. "Listen," Don Ernesto had said, and he had rung the bell. "One ring means we are halfway. Two rings mean we are safe at the top." By the second ring, Tomás had been laughing.
• This morning the car reached the top with its usual shudder. Instead of stepping out,
• Don Ernesto unscrewed the bell from its bracket and placed it, cold and heavy, in
• Tomás's hands.
• "A young woman starts on Monday," he said. "She has a good ear for the cables, and she will take fine care of this car. But somebody should keep the bell."
• Tomás looked down at the harbor, then at the bell, and finally understood why his grandfather had been memorizing the view. He did not trust his voice, so he let the bell speak for him. He rang it once, softly. Halfway. Then, after a long moment, he rang it again.
• 1. How long had Don Ernesto run the funicular?
• 2. Why had Don Ernesto been polishing the bell for longer and staring at the water?
• What was really happening?
• 3. Paragraph 3 is a flashback. What does it show, and why does it matter at the end?
• 4. State the central idea and explain how one paragraph develops it.