For My Dad

As a young child my Dad took my sister and I down to an overpass to watch the steam engines, Puffers as we called them, come breathing and puffing out of the round house and going onto the world. We were entranced. As they came towards us Dad brought us back a bit so the steam and soot wouldn't get all over us. During the summer months we had a cottage on Cape Cod and again, we would go to the train station to wait for the train. Then it had gone to diesel. Sometimes Dad would place a penny on the tracks and we would wait as the train roared past us and flattened our new prize.

During my adult life I have found I'm never living to far away from trains and tracks and hearing them blasting their horn as they roll through town. It brings me comfort.

Now as we spend two nights in Van Horn, Texas the tracks are about 200 feet from us. Needless to say, I'm in heaven.

My Dad always wanted to travel out West and see the land, the long line of box cars being drawn across the country but never got beyond seeing it in magazines or on the TV. Last night as I lay in bed I could hear the train coming miles away. I knew it was getting closer and closer and I knew it would blow it's horn as he crossed roads going through this small town but as he did, I jumped, then smiled until I could hear the next approaching train.

This one is for you Dad!!

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