The uncle, the guide to the past and tradition, is the one who preserves for the singer in the present. The past is preserved because it contains new possibilities for the future. The old machine is still in good running order, and thus can be used and enjoyed. It shows that freedom comes from a paradoxical turn to tradition.

The barn is also a kind of technology, a way of storing the heat of cattle insulated by the hay in the upper part which is also their feed. The cattle are protected from the weather. It is also a place of mystery: “down” suggests something is hidden that will soon be revealed.

The singer is now part of nature. Speed and the natural exertion of his legs make him like the wind. He is almost elemental, tapping into the creative power and freedom he has found outside of the urban.

The Turbo Freight train is a symbol of technological prowess. This is an ambivalent moment in the song, for the freight is both part of the system of control and the means of escape.
The turbo allows the singer to cross the borderline, and so find the freedom he desires.

The white hair of the uncle indicates his age, and symbolizes his wisdom. In gerontophilic cultures, like the Ancient Romans or the Confucian, it is the old who are revered. In this case the young singer turns to the older for the key to creative freedom.

The wire is the restrictive border around the urban agglomeration, a strict demarcation which keeps the free and the natural outside. Man is rendered artificial within the wire. Outside is the condition of the artist, the one who desires to be creative and free.

Sundays are a day of rest from work, a symbol of freedom in a world of necessity. The preserving of Sunday in this way comes from the Jewish notion of Sabbath, the day on which God rested from the work of creation.

They eyes refer to electronic surveillence, a fear in 1973, a growing reality in the present. Rush’s desire for freedom runs counter to the modern trend of control. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon was the conceptual ancestor of this view that all actions of all people must be surveyed by authority at all times.

In the fictional universe of the song, based on the short story “A Nice Morning Drive” by Richard Foster, the Motor Law has so restricted cars as to render illegal all vehicles built for fun, free driving. The only cars allowed are massive vehicles which keep their passengers safe even at high speeds.

Farms a the place of human interaction with nature. Here ecology incorporates human ingenuity and natural abundance. The ingenuity will be seen in the Red Barchetta. But the farm is of the past, just like the uncle. The technological enlave where the singer (and most people) live keeps nature out.

The return to nature has its roots in the Romanticism of the 18th and 19th century, seen in thinkers like Rousseau and painters like Constable.