Trains

This one is dedicated to Shortrest.  You know who you are.

When I was a kid I use to push my bed (yes this was before the water bed) in front of my window every summer night and open it as wide as it would go.  My sister and father are now nodding their heads as they realize why their allergies were so bad at night.  The wind would gently blow over my face and I could tip my head back and look at the stars twinkling in the heavens.  But the stars and the wind were not the reason for the nightly bedroom make over.  The reason was never seen and really can never be seen.
 
I live in a suburb or Kansas City, 'Cowtown'.  Coined by some clever chap years ago as he watched the  cattle being driven down, or over, or up to Kansas City, and to the stock yards west of  downtown and to the railroad lines where they would board a train bound for slaughter houses and grocery stores across the country.  Kansas City Southern Railway, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Union Pacific, just to name a few of the railroad that call Kansas City home.  The tracks for the railroads spring outwards from Kansas City like a crack in a windshield.  Allowing passage to places like Washington, Oregon, California, Texas,  Minnesota you get the idea.  So no matter where you live in Kansas City there's a good chance that a railroad line runs very close to your house. (ask Brent)

Summer nights brought a symphony of sounds into my room, cicadas and crickets, owls hooting, dogs barking, and that lone whistle of a train off in the night.  Like a French Horn add so much emotion and depth to a song, the train whistle floating on the night air brings a longing, an aching to belong somewhere, anywhere.   Knowing it will never stop for long, no where to call home.  It rides the night rail to destinations unknown.  Here for a moment and then gone, the darkness enveloping and concealing it's passage. I lived for those moments.  It was a lullaby for me. 

When I grew older I married and we moved down town, not far from the trains.  I no longer needed to push open my windows to hear my beloved whistles.  They drifted through the apartment and brought music to my days as well as my nights.  A few years later we moved away from downtown and out to the subburbs.  But as I said before when you live around Kansas City you are never far from a train track.  There are two lines that run just a few miles from our home and with several crossings in their paths the trains sound their whistles at least three times a night for me.

It is winter now and the windows are shut but I look forward to this summer sitting outside on the deck looking up at the stars and listening to my symphony of trains.