Random Thoughts: I heard the train call my name.

The crossing, looking into
downtown in front of our old house.

Off in the distance I hear a train whistle on this early Sunday morning. It's a lonely sound, that. It's always made my heart ache a little, hearing its siren call, deep in the night. Long and mournful. I used to hear it in my old room as a teenager and it set my heart in motion, creating a longing and a low ache deep inside of me. As children, my sisters and I lived just a few houses from the tracks, and I don't know if it is a longing for childhood that creates that emotion inside of me, or if it is something more I cannot pinpoint. I can imagine the location of the tracks, and how we used to joyfully walk the rails during the day - not too far down, and not to a point where we could not hop off without injury if a train ever did rush on by. We could always walk safely from our house to the right down the rails, all the way to Volney Street. There were safe places to hop off along the way, and we were expert at walking on top of the rails.

Hollyhocks

We played in the ditches near the tracks, too, catching frogs, watching dragonflies dance and flit around tall stalks of hollyhocks,

Hollyhock dolls

cornflowers, cattails, and Queen Anne's lace. We picked the hollyhocks to make beautiful dolls from their flowers; elegant ladies with with wide, flowing floral ball gowns. Their heads and faces came from the unopened buds, and we loved them. I remember my father teaching us how to make them, which surprises me, even now. It is a memory I am not sure where came from, but it is there, nonetheless.

I have an image permanently in my mind of those tracks and the elegant curve that swept away from our house back toward Syracuse. Still, the last time I was home I walked around town taking photos - of some of these very things; the flowers in the ditches along the train tracks, of the sweep of the curve of the track near our old house, and even the trees and the yard from far in the back where we used to play. As time passes I am so glad I have these photos to take out and look at now and then.

The tracks and curve near our old hom

Cornflowers

I know in my mind, I saw a plethora of faces pressed up against the glass as passengers were swept along from point to point. I also know now that these were not passenger trains, but freight trains coming from Oswego and Fulton and from the nuclear power plant at Nine Mile Point on Lake Ontario and at a variety of other points north and beyond. Their destination was Syracuse and maybe other points within the state or west. At one time in the distant past, Phoenix was a hub of activity, although rail travel was not at it's heyday; it is a part of the Old Erie and Barge canals, and river travel was a pretty sound means of transporting goods through the village. Still, the sounds of the train; the whistle, combined with the clickity clack of the metal on metal; the high pitched squeal of iron wheels on the steel of the rails themselves all created an indelible memory in my mind and heart. The low rumble of the motion and the weight of cars passing is something I can hear even now as the train moves along far in the distance from where I am now - points unknown. The image still in my mind's eye is the curve of the tracks as it headed left from our house, toward the city. The trees closed in a bit, although there were wide ditches on the sides, beautiful, elegant, tall hardwood trees grew glorious in the autumn, were picturesque and snow covered in the winter, then brilliant green in the spring and early summer.

Flowers in the railway ditch.

It is imprinted in my mind always. Now, as an adult, I know that Chestnut Street crosses the rail track not far away over near the cemetery. I know that if I were to walk or drive toward downtown, turn left on Cherry Street and walk to the end, then turn left on Chestnut the tracks would cross my path again. But that stretch in between, to a child was unknown and unexplored. We were not allowed to venture that way on foot; the fear instilled in us by our parents and grandparents of the danger involved and never knowing when the train would appear. It was a healthy fear, and we took heed, although today I would be curious to walk it. From a child's point of view, that was destination unknown and because I listened to my parents, where the tracks went and what they passed was something I could only ever imagine.

Cat tails along the tracks.

The whistle in the night, and the rumble in the distance still, all these years later make me long for something although I have never been able to pinpoint just what. I have seen movies and read stories about people who rode the rails - especially back during the days of the Depression. I have had fleeting thoughts that maybe my soul lived back then, and I rode the rails all over, living off the land or whatever could be salvaged from the cars themselves. I can't help but imagine myself as a hobo, as a vagabond, no home to go back to, the only future in front of me wherever the train took me. It is a romantic notion, this. It does not feel sad or lonely, or even overly tragic. I like to think that, although we are programmed to believe it was a hard life, it still was a life of freedom and of choice that moved individuals along wholly free with choices, not a life a life of tragedy or sadness as we now believe. In the children's book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Edward encounters a railway tramp, and for many years he travels with him, until one day he is taken from his friend, and his next adventure begins. Edward was happy travelling the rails, and I cannot help but believe that if that was a past life of mine life so long ago, it was a happy one full of adventure and wonder. And I cannot help but believe that those are the reasons why my heart is so full of longing and ache whenever I hear a train whistle at night, or off in the distance very early in the morning. The longing is for a life that probably made me happy long, long ago.

In 2005 when I was in Italy I took my first real train ride from Florence to Venice, and then from Venice back to Rome. It was beautiful, watching the scenery from the window. Last summer I took the train from Syracuse to Toldeo, Ohio, where I met my boyfriend and we drove to the west coast. This summer I took the train from Lakeland, to my sister's house in Columbia, SC. Riding on the train, looking out the window at the car's the houses and the landscape flashing by, it filled my heart and soul with wonder and even more of a longing to travel more. I believe it is imperative to who I am that I am meant to wander, to wonder, and to dream. The sound of the train whistle speaks to me from some place deep inside of my deepest imagination.