A Piedmont Porchlight Story

There are some sounds a man never outgrows. Rain on a tin roof. A screen door closing. A whip-poor-will calling from somewhere out beyond the pasture. And the long, lonely whistle of a freight train crossing Piedmont just after midnight.

I don’t care whether you’re eight years old or eighty. When that whistle rolls through the darkness, something inside you stops to listen.

I grew up hearing trains. Back then, the Southern Railroad depot sat on the north edge of town like it had all the time in the world. Just a couple of blocks further along Centre Avenue lay the Seaboard railroad and depot. Freight trains came through slow enough to count the boxcars if you were patient. The Silver Comet carried folks toward places that sounded impossibly far away. New York. New Orleans. Cities I’d only seen on maps folded inside the back of an atlas.

As a boy, I’d lie in bed with my bedroom window cracked open, especially this time of year when the nights finally began cooling off. Somewhere around midnight, there it’d be. One long whistle. Then another. Soft at first. Then filling the whole valley.

I’d pull the covers up under my chin and imagine that engineer easing the throttle forward while the train disappeared into the darkness beyond Dugger Mountain. I used to wonder where everybody aboard was going. Maybe somebody was headed home after years away. Maybe a young soldier was looking forward to seeing his mama. Maybe two sweethearts were beginning a brand-new life together. Maybe somebody was chasing a dream too big to fit inside Piedmont. Funny the things a boy imagines when all he’s got is a whistle in the night.

Years rolled by. I traveled some myself. Saw places my younger self would’ve thought belonged in storybooks. Some were every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped. Others taught me there’s a difference between visiting somewhere and belonging there.

No matter where life carried me, though, one thing never changed. Whenever I heard a freight train after dark, for just a little while, I was home again.

Maybe that’s because trains are honest. They don’t pretend to stay. They were built to keep moving. To carry burdens from one place to another. To connect towns that might otherwise never know each other existed. There’s something comforting about that.

Knowing the world is still turning while you’re asleep. Knowing somebody is out there working the night shift. Knowing somewhere beyond the darkness, another little town is hearing the very same whistle a few minutes after you do.

A few years ago, I was sitting on my porch well after midnight. Couldn’t sleep. At my age, that happens from time to time. The coffee had long since gone cold. The crickets were carrying on like they’d been hired by the hour. Then, almost on cue, the whistle came. Long. Low. Lonesome enough to make the stars pause and listen.

I closed my eyes. For a heartbeat, I wasn’t an old undertaker sitting on a porch. I was a little barefoot boy again. Wondering what lay beyond the next bend in the tracks. Dreaming of places I’d never seen. Believing every train carried a story.

Then the sound began to fade. First the whistle. Then the rumble of steel wheels. Finally… Nothing but crickets again. It struck me then that maybe that’s why train whistles move us the way they do. They never stay very long. They’re here, then they’re gone. Just like summers. Just like childhood. Just like Saturday mornings with people we loved.

Maybe that’s why they sound a little lonely. Not because they’re leaving. Because they remind us that everything beautiful eventually keeps traveling. I opened my eyes and looked toward the darkness where the tracks disappeared. Somewhere out there, that freight train was still rolling.

Some young fellow was probably leaning against a window, wondering what the next town would be like. Some old man, sitting on another porch a hundred miles away, was smiling into the night for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. And somewhere a little boy was hearing that whistle for the very first time. Dreaming dreams too big for the bedroom he was lying in. I hope he never loses that wonder. Because the older I get, the less I believe that freight train is carrying freight.

I think it’s carrying memories. It picks up a few at every crossing. Leaves a few at every depot. And every now and then, right around midnight, it blows its whistle just to remind the rest of us that they’re still aboard.

By the time the last echo slipped away over Dugger Mountain, I found myself smiling. Not because the train had come. Not because it had gone. But because after all these years…

It still knew the way home.