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Category: Serendipity | Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:35 pm

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From the kitchen window over the sink I can look out across two fields and a road to a railroad track. Trains come by frequently, at least once a day. They are a window on the world.
Some of the graffiti painted on the boxcars ranks with artwork--better than Jackson Pollock, by golly! The auto tranports are see-through cars. The cars inside are just outlines, much like looking through partially closed Venetian blinds. You can see something is there, but can't make out details. I never get a sneak-peak at next year's models.
Some of the flatbed cars carry the large metal containers that come by ship into Houston and are loaded on a train to go up north. They almost invariably have Chinese characters on them. I wonder what they say. . . .
There is a coal-burning electricity generating plant to the south of us, and the coal trains are long--some over a mile long. I hate to think of all that coal being burned, and what the result is to the air. I'm glad the plant is far from us, but I'd rather it weren't there at all.
Once the Barnum & Bailey circus was going to a city north of us, and I saw the circus train! Some of the cars had paintings of elephants and lions and tigers, and all of the cars were brightly colored. I had no idea that circuses still traveled by train. It's more romantic somehow, than traveling by truck.
The train tracks run right through the small town near us. In fact, they cross Main Street. A mile-long train holds up traffic for quite a while (we don't have much traffic, but we cultivate the illusion by having traffic jams every chance we get).
When the barrier arm comes down to block the road, and the red light goes on and the clang-clang starts, we are in for a wait. Since it's a small town, any four people are bound to know one another. When the locomotive goes by, people get out of their cars and trucks, visit with neighbors and acquaintances, and spend the time chatting about weighty matters. It would take just a few more B&SF trains going through town before we'd have the world's problems solved.
It takes a minute or two after the train has passed for the arm to raise and the light to go off, so everyone has time to say "goodbye, come see us, y'hear" and get back in their vehicle.
We hear the train whistles at night (during the day, too but they seem more evocative at night) and I think of all the world's goods rolling by a half-mile or so away from us. It is comforting, somehow.


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Annette wrote on Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:44 pm:

i live in the city...and there is a train track (elevated) 2 blocks away.....i love hearing them..and you are right..they are comforting to hear! when we were kids, we used to try and count the cars while waiting for it to pass.....

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toni wrote on Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:45 pm:

There are train tracks about that far from us too, can't see it because of homes and two blocks of warehouses. But I hear it several times a day.

I love hearing it at night too, reminds me of summer nights at my grandmothers. Doors and windows open hoping to get some sort of air stirring though the bedroom and my 4 older aunt's (oldest one is just 10 yrs older than me) telling ghost stories trying to scare the bejeebers out of their little niece.

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Jewell wrote on Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:34 pm:

You paint such a lovely picture with words. Love the post

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carolyn keiper wrote on Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:00 pm:

Jane, you write so nicely I would think that perhaps you are a journalist...Thanks for the view from your window today. I could clearly "see" it as if I was there.

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Tooty2shoes wrote on Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:03 pm:

Great article.We also have train trax about a mile down the road from us. We often hear the train whistle about 9:00 or 10:00pm as it brings fertilizer to our local feed mill.

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