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LIFE, ACTUALLY
VALLEY OF THE TRAINS
No matter where I go in this urban village, railroad tracks crisscross my path. Wherever I am, there is soon to be a train rumbling along this way or that way. So many laid-steel pathways are bisecting my travels that I no longer pay much attention to them.
But the trains cannot be ignored. They have been around so long that just a lone, low-pitched whistle can trigger a memory.
Here in the Valley, each train’s passing is echoed. Each foghorn blast bounces off foothills and echoes somewhere in my head.
Lying abed in the wee hours, I can hear the dinosaur howl that startles memory and imagination. I close my eyes and imagine that the southbound-westbound engines are pulling their mysterious graffiti decorated boxcars through Jefferson County toward Tuscaloosa and Meridian and New Orleans and beyond.
I recall a long-ago youth who imagined that he could hop a freight and take off to climes unknown and adventures unpredicted and have the time of his life.
So, the trains and tracks are always present, permanent leftovers from a time when the valley bustled with iron and coal and steelmaking and smokestacks a-billowing.
As a grown-up, I am annoyed when a slow-moving behemoth causes me to pause in my self-important journey. But, as the Youth still inside me mutters, “Yes, but imagine what’s in those linked cars, guess what kinds of people are staring at me as I stare back at their passing faces. Marvel at the lives of engineers and porters and maintainers who keep the monster revved up and running.”
I smile and enjoy the moment, roll down my window to take in the clanging and howling and friction squeal of metal against metal. I watch the precariously stacked top-heavy vehicles roll along, balancing the tightwire. I hope against hope that the next wreck never occurs.
Later, I pause and park on a bridge, gaze down at the tracks and trains below, puzzle over signs and symbols and switchings galore, and pretend that perhaps one of these days I will all-aboard and begin a journey unlike any other journey, not knowing where I am headed or where I will wind up.
It would be nice to take a deep meditative breath and appreciate the ride
© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed