the train tracks

The front yard was a very small patch of grass between our front porch and the gravel lane. Our house was the last house on this end of the lane. The gravels were actually small smooth stones. I could sit for hours examining them carefully. I picked out the prettiest ones—or sometimes the ugliest ones when I felt sorry for them—to keep. I remember one time, after a particularly long and hard rain, building a dam out of those stones. I watched how the water slowed as it reached the little dam then flowed faster again after it went over the dam.

Just beyond the lane was the railroad tracks. I dreamed about the railroad a lot back then. I’ve always wanted to take a long train ride, but I never have. Well, not that I remember. The story goes that when I was two years old my family took a train ride through the English countryside. Apparently I mooed to every cow we passed. Mom swears the other passengers love it; Dad rolls his eyes.

My brothers and I used to put pennies on these tracks at night and rush out to get them the next morning. The coins were now worthless as legal tender but lucky as a rabbit’s foot. We stopped that after someone at school warned us we could get arrested for defacing government property.

My younger brother and I knew the train schedule. The train went twice a day: once around noon and once around 9:30 p.m. Between noon and bedtime we were brave enough to walk on the tracks. A few years earlier I was in training to be a gymnast. Now I pretended the track was my balance beam and would sometimes do cartwheels on it. This never failed to stop Ruth’s heart.


We waited for the school bus at the railroad crossing, which was not quite half way down the lane from our house. It was the only access to our gravel lane from the main road. One morning we were waiting for the bus and a train whistle blew. A train was coming down the tracks at the wrong time of day! I ran back up the lane to assure Ruth that we had heard it and were off the tracks. I thought she’d be relieved to know it. Instead, she worried that I would miss the bus.

“Run!” she said. “Run! Don’t miss the bus!”

I ran as hard as I could, which wasn’t very hard for a child with activity induced asthma. I barely beat the train and I ran right in front of it. I know I scared the engineer; he blew the whistle and hit the brakes. But I made it across. I peed my pants in the process though and ended up missing the bus anyway.

Sometimes the noon trains had passenger cars. If we were home from school, Dave and I would stand in the lane and wave at the passengers. They always waved back. I was sort of a prissy thing back then, so sometimes I would dress up for the occasion. I watched them go by and wondered who they were and where they were going.

At night we would listen for the 9:30 train. Some nights we tried to be asleep before we heard it. Actually I think this was a game I made up to get David to go to sleep. I loved the whistle and can’t imagine that I would have tried to be asleep before I heard it. I think the nights that I did fall asleep early, I heard the whistle anyway and these are the nights I dreamed of riding the train.