A Piedmont Porchlight Story

Some sounds belong to a place. You can close your eyes, and they’ll carry you home before your feet ever get there. For me, one of those sounds was a train at midnight. I don’t mean the whistle. Everybody remembers the whistle. I’m talking about everything else. The low rumble that seemed to come up through the ground. The clank of couplers stretching tight. The steady rhythm of steel wheels finding the rails. The sound that started soft enough you weren’t sure you’d heard it, until the whole night began to hum.

I used to hear it from my bedroom window. Some nights I’d already be asleep. Some nights I’d still be reading. Sometimes I’d just be lying there listening to the crickets. Then, way off in the darkness, the train would begin its slow conversation with the night.

Funny thing about trains. They never seemed lonely. Even when they were. I reckon that’s because they were always headed somewhere. Years later, after I’d grown up, I’d still hear that midnight freight.

Sometimes from my front porch. Sometimes while taking the trash out. Sometimes when the whole town seemed to be holding its breath. The sound always made me stop what I was doing. Not for long. Just long enough. Long enough to wonder who was sitting in that locomotive. Long enough to wonder what was inside those boxcars. Long enough to remember being a little boy who thought every train was carrying adventure.

One evening Curtis asked me, “You still stop when you hear a train?”

“I surely do.”

“Why?”

I smiled. “I reckon I’m just making sure Piedmont’s still there.”

He laughed. “You don’t need a train to tell you that.”

“No. But it helps.”

Hattie heard us from behind the counter. “My granddaddy said you could tell what kind of night it was by the way a train sounded.”

Curtis looked at her. “How’s that?”

“If the air was heavy, the whistle sounded closer. If it was cold, it carried for miles.” She smiled. “I always liked the cold nights.”

“So did I.”

There was something about hearing a train you couldn’t see. It made the world feel bigger than your front porch. Bigger than Centre Avenue. Bigger than Piedmont itself.

Funny thing is, the older I get, the less I wonder where the train’s going. I find myself wondering where it’s been. How many little towns has it rolled through tonight? How many children looked up from their bedroom windows? How many old men stepped out onto a porch just to listen? Maybe more than we think.

Maybe every little town has somebody standing still for just a minute while the freight rolls by. The last train I heard before moving away from home stayed with me a long time. Not because it sounded different. Because I knew I’d remember it.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re making a memory. That night, I did. Even now, If I’m awake around midnight and I hear a distant whistle, I don’t have to look outside. I’m already home.

Funny thing about old trains. Long after the tracks are gone… the sound still knows the way home.

**Train Photograph: Copyright: © 2016, Center for Railroad Photography and Art, Credit: Photograph by J. Parker Lamb, Co, Creator: Lamb, J. Parker