I Heard A Train In The Night

Common Sense Commentary:

The first house I remember living in, as a child, was a small three room, shot-gun style built by my dad. We lived on the western edge of Sweetwater in West Texas. One of my earliest memories was on cold, clear, winter nights. My mother would iron our cold sheets with a hot brick, wrap it in a towel and place it at our feet. I would lie there, in the cold darkness and listen to the far away, shrill whistle of one of those old, black, steam engine trains passing through Sweetwater, headed west. I can still hear that shrill, mysterious whistle, in my memory, and the excitement it brought to my imagination. I have had a love affair with passenger trains ever since, and have ridden trains all over the U.S. and Canada, as well as Mexico, Jamaica, Europe and Korea ... over the years. Train whistles, or horns, have never negatively affected my sleep or desire to catch a train to distant places. The opposite is true. We now live close enough to a railroad track to hear train horns in the night. I pay no attention to them in the day. Last night, a cold, late November, Texas midnight, I enjoyed another short train trip ... in my dreams or imagination, when I heard a train passing through ... on it's way somewhere I would like to go. I thought I heard, in the distance, the "last days" train, whose horn was a trumpet, sounding a final warning ... of it's arrival and departure ... for glory. The conductor shouted "All aboard" and swung  his lantern, a signal to the engineer, who sounded his horn once more, and our final trip began. I don't know if I was asleep or awake, but I was happily on board that last train ... outbound. RB