Trains
By Rebecca Hertz
Published Pilot Point Post Signal
The town I was raised in was not much larger than Pilot Point when I arrived on the scene. So, my recent move back to life in a quaint community spurs a lot of memories. In the town of my youth, which boasted a population of less than 2,000, my days were spent wading through the muddy creek behind my house to gorge myself on wild blackberries and catching jars of tadpoles or crawdaddies.
Now that town is unrecognizable – my old haunts are gone and there are over 200,000 people who call it home. Sadly, they will never know what the community was like back in those early days.
Life was quiet. There wasn’t the constant hum of air conditioning and only an occasional siren. A telephone call after 9 p.m. would make your heart skip a beat, because it meant something had happened that wasn’t good to someone you knew.
Before the sun rose, an invisible rooster would crow announcing the day, but the sound that marked consistency in my life was the blaring horn of the trains coming through town. In a small town, you never live too far from the tracks and the clicking of the metal wheels across the ties filled my imagination. Of course there were freight trains with boxcars full of unknown contents, but there were also passenger trains. Windows filled with nameless faces blurring past faster than my eyes could focus. The location of departure and destination were a mystery as they glided past on the outskirts of my life.
At night I would lay in my bed waiting for the sound of the evening train, a sound that made me feel secure, as if all was right with the world. So now, in this small community, void of traffic and filled with silence, it’s the train crying out and rumbling past that I notice most.
It has just been in the past couple of years that I have even stepped foot on a train. I traveled from Ft.
Worth to Temple one Sunday afternoon. Expecting to be bored, I had armed myself with music, books and a journal to pass the time. Surprisingly, those items never came out of my bag.
For me, being on that train was like stepping into a time warp. Looking out the window at the passing landscape, with no view of what lay ahead or behind, leaves no choice but to live in the moment. Each snapshot gives way to the next. Cars filled with impatient drivers sitting at the crossing are forced to stop and take a breath. They can choose whether to worry about what is up ahead or simply watch the slices of sunlight rhythmically streaming between the cars.
I remember sitting in our truck with my dad silently waiting for the train to pass, cranking my neck to see the caboose before it arrived and anxiously waiting to waive at the man standing on the platform at the very end of the train, knowing when I waived, he would waive back. For those few long minutes, time would stop until the clanging bell and flashing lights ceased and the arms lifted allowing us to pass and time would move forward again. Like some silent signal, everything would go back into motion and conversations would magically continue exactly where they had left off.
I find myself in my new surroundings and settling in, adjusting to the quiet and mesmerized by multitude of stars I can see from my own front porch. Then I hear the train.
Copyright (c) 2011 Pilot Point Post Signal
By Rebecca Hertz
There is a gentleman who comes into my office every Friday to buy a paper. He has a kind smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Each week, he shares another tidbit about his life in our brief conversation. If I comment about the brutal heat, he takes me to Detroit with snow so deep it almost reaches the second floor of his house.
I tell him about my children and his face lights up and he swells with pride counting off his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He asks about my work and shares his past in the auto industry in Detroit.
His visits never fail to cheer me up. By the end of the week, when I am tired and lacking motivation, his energy is somehow contagious and spurs my imagination. But because it is the end of the week and so much is left to do, I don’t have the time to sit and share stories.
On his most recent visit, he inquired as to whether or not I am married. He seemed to think the right fella is just what I need, but I’m not so easily convinced.
I was never very good at dating, especially in my teen years. Mom’s rule was only letting me go out if I took my little sister, 11 years my junior. This was a somewhat limiting requirement, which guaranteed that I wouldn’t be leaving the house very often. So, when I did manage to convince her to let me go on a real, I really didn’t know how to act and my attempts at idle conversation failed miserably. Unless the young man was willing to overlook the deafening silence and constant fidgeting, most were first and last date combinations.
Gazing upward toward the lighted window reveals a shadowy figure, bouncing up and down with arms frantically waving.
“Kill him! Get him down and kill the bastard!” a woman cries.
Picture a balmy, moonlit Saturday night. At 10:58 p.m., a red, otherwise nondescript teenage boy’s first car, with a Beach Boys cassette in the 8-track deck, pulls slowly into the cul-de-sac. The kid with a surfer haircut, flipping up in the front over his forehead, parks the car and walks around to open the door for me. The evening is deceivingly quiet and he reaches down and takes my hand as we stroll up the driveway toward the porch. Suddenly a screeching voice rings out breaking the calm silence.
Mom was fun loving and enthusiastic, which could explain why she was concerned about what I might do without the scrutiny of her watchful eye.
My curfew was 11 p.m. – barely enough time to drive across town, catch a movie and get back. But it was the return home that would determine if I would be asked again, because that’s when the real show started.
Those tender young thoughts of anticipation- Will he kiss me? Should I kiss him? - dissolved with the sudden halt, bulging eyes and rigor of terror pulsing through the frozen, spindly body of my date. I, of course, was mortified. But his ghostly pallor and expression of combined fear and puzzlement suddenly strike me as funny and I can’t stop laughing long enough to explain before she starts again.
My date starts his retreat as I stretch to reach his hand. I manage to grab a handful of shirt that slips through my fingers.
“Grab him – don’t let him get away. Kill him!” the screaming banshee retorts. “Hit him with the chair!”
“Wrestling. She’s watching wrestling,” I shout down the driveway. “It’s Saturday night and she loves wrestling and roller derby.”
But it’s too late, the sound and visual are burned into his mind. The car door is closed and locked and it’s in gear and rolling down the drive by the time I reach it.
“Come back, wait,” I shout, waving my arms, probably looking very much like the flailing image in the upstairs bedroom window.
I trudge up to the bedroom, and peak around the doorjamb catching a glimpse of Fritz Von Erich hurling his opponent through the air.
“Is that you honey? Come up and tell me all about your date,” she calls down the stairs.
Defeated, with shoulders slumped, I trudge up the driveway to the front door. I glance back on last time to see if my date had somehow magically reappeared before going inside.