Trains in the Night

Seems I've been some sort of sick since I moved, and today the stuffiness from my head (and maybe the swelling in my feet) decided to take up residence in my lungs.  I haven't coughed like this in years, and the hi-test Robitusin I bought on the way home is obviously not the night-time kind. 

As I lay here not sleeping, I find myself listening to the Brown Line which runs about a block and a half away.  Funny I hadn't noticed how often a train goes by until now.  I've found that in most circumstances you learn to shut out certain sounds, like when working in a cubicle farm, you learn to not hear what goes on around you.  It's not that you ignore it, you actually don't hear it.  Unless it's quiet, like now, I don't hear the city noises.  I thought sirens would be distracting, but frankly I don't hear any more here than I did living near Hwy 72.

I was thinking how for much of my life I've lived near railroad tracks.  I grew up in a town where 2 railways converged - I'm not sure now, but I think it was the Southern and the Santa Fe - so the railroad was just part of life.  We would spit on trains from the viaduct and put pennies on the tracks. At the little farmhouse in Fackler (where the kids grew up) we lived about a quarter mile from the tracks, and it took a few weeks not to hear every train that went by.  They tended to be generous with the whistle; the crossing didn't have lights or barriers.  One morning shortly after we moved there, I woke up with the realization that something was different.  A train was on the track but it was stopped.  Odd.  It was later in the morning that I learned that someone had been fishing from the railroad bridge a short distance away, and didn't hear the train in time to make it to safety.  He was the husband of a co-worker, and a guy I knew from high school.  A funeral director once told me that you never want to go up against a train - 'cause you ain't gonna win.

I'm glad the trains here don't have whistles.  I don't think that's something I could learn to not hear.  And I'm glad they're either up in the air or underground.  But mostly I'm just glad they're here.  Gives me some sense of normalcy in the middle of the night.