Most nights as I lay down for sleep, I can hear the warning blasts from a train rumbling through town about 5 miles away. I smile inside whenever I hear it. Somehow, the sound of a train is a comforting thing to me at the end of an evening. I roll over, position my pillow just right, and nestle the cool side against my cheek, letting the train carry me to sleep. Trains pass through our town all day long, but this far away, you never hear them until night falls. At this distance, they are drowned out in the daylight by life’s activity—lawnmowers, weed eaters, traffic, the hum of air conditioners, the voices of neighbors, dogs barking. But, late at night the air seems thinner, the world has quieted. The chain restaurants, the Wal-Mart, the auto dealerships, and strip malls have all gone dormant until morning. The train’s air-horn can pierce through the light traffic out on the road, the buildings of town, and the pine trees, river bottom, and houses between here and there. From inside these walls, in the quiet night, if the owls are not calling outside my window, it is only the Norfolk Southern that pierces the darkness.
My affinity for distant trains in the night results from growing up in close proximity to their rumblings. Cordele, Georgia, where I grew up, is an old railroad town that remains notorious for its trains. Three rail lines- the Norfolk Southern, CSX, and the Heart of Georgia-all intersect in Cordele. They are heard all over town and throughout the countryside. It is nearly impossible to get from one side of town to the other and back at any given time without stopping for at least one train. On the way back from many nights fishing at the farm with my grandfather, we’d cross the tracks on Drayton Road as we headed back to town. Taking this road today is always a gamble as to whether or not you’ll be delayed at this spot. As kid, waiting there in the dark with Pop for the train to pass, I’d wonder what it must be like to roll through the night on a train, through the wide lanes cut through the woods and fields and small towns in the tunnel of the train’s light while everyone else was asleep.
I come by this affinity for train sounds honestly. My grandfather didn’t pay much mind to the common diesel trains that regularly ran through Cordele. He was; however, partial to steam engines. As my grandmother and I were watching an Atlanta Braves game one evening she was grumbling about Braves 3rd baseman, Bob Horner’s long curly hair sticking out from under his batting helmet, a Virginia Slim dangling from her fingers. Pop was dozing in his chair, fingertips shoved into the belt-line of his pants to rest his arms. Through the night air we suddenly heard the whistle of a steam engine approaching. Pop jumped up from his chair, gathered us into his old Ford LTD, and we raced to the center of town just to watch the steam engine pass.
During the mid-80’s, I lived in my mother’s hometown of Moreland, Georgia, population 389. She and my stepfather had bought a large old house on the corner of Church Street and Camp Street next to the Methodist church right on the little town square. My room was in the center of the house and had no windows because a back room had been added onto the house behind my room long before we lived there. I didn’t spend a lot of time in that room as a result. It always seemed a little dark and lonely. Instead, I spent a lot of time outside shooting baskets, tossing a baseball or football, and tending my first garden—a tomato plant and a watermelon plant— because I wanted to be like my grandfathers.
Moreland, originally called Puckett Station was built around the Atlanta and West Point Railroad, which arrived in 1852. Both the CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines regularly haul freight through Moreland today. Our house on the corner had a broad front porch that wrapped around the south side of the house, with a wooden swing hanging on chains from the ceiling. It was the kind of porch you’d find Andy sitting on while he strummed his guitar and talked over the day’s events with Aunt Bee and Opie. I read there on lazy afternoons as trains passed on the tracks about 150 yards to the West, where my friend Kevin and I would sometimes wander and pick up old glass telephone line insulators that fell from the poles. The trains passed through the little town at night as I laid in bed in that room with no windows and even then, as they sounded off in the darkness, I felt some strange sense of reassurance and wonder that trains traveled the countryside and passed through little towns like mine, going who knows where.
After we were married, my wife and I lived for 3 years in a duplex within walking distance of my work. The duplex was less than 100 yards from the train tracks running through town, servicing the Norfolk Southern line parallelling Highway 41. The same line that I heard pass through other towns I called home. The same line I still see and hear out my office window every day and the same line I hear in the distance as I lay in bed each night. When we first moved into the duplex the trains woke us several times a night. After a while we grew used to them and their blasts became unnoticeable, like an old picture on the wall you walk past every day. Later, when we moved into our house, we could no longer hear the trains and strangely, we noticed their absence. But through the years, as the kids grew up and eventually left for college, our lives gradually became quieter. I could once again hear the train’s air-horn piercing the night. I haven’t traveled on these train tracks but I have followed them up and down the line it seems my entire life. They’ve always been there.
I like trains and their sounds for the way they travel through the rural countryside, its fields and forests, and intermittently through the countless small towns seemingly destined to grow larger or dry up all together, until finally, the trains reach some city, where they will turn around and come back again.
Lying in bed, I hear the distant blast of a train passing though our sleeping town as faithful as the sun and the moon. For some odd reason, it brings a secure feeling that all is well with the world. That someone is out there keeping it all running. How strange it is that something so loud and obnoxious up close, can, from a distance, be so soothing.
Thoughts From The Orchard 