The Sound of a Train in the Distance

A Restless Night

Last night, I probably got about two hours of sleep, if that. I don’t know why I couldn’t go to sleep, but it may have something to do with an excess of Sun Drop and Coke Zero. As of today, I am restricting myself to ONE caffeinated beverage.

It rained gently in the night and it’s raining gently right now. There doesn’t appear to be any possibility of the weather clearing even though the weatherman said it would. We’ll see, I guess.

Well, I was wrong about the weather. It was beautiful for a couple of hours, but now it’s raining again.

iTunes and My New iPhone4

Apparently, my new iPhone4 will sync with my computer using iTunes. You can download music to your phone and use it like an iPod. Of course, my big problem I have almost 50 Gb of music and books in my iTunes. My iPhone only has a capacity of 32 Gb. After some research, I decided the best way to enjoy music on my iPhone was to set up a special Playlist folder just for it. I spent quite a bit of time picking out music and adding it to my Playlist folder. This folder takes up almost 3 Gb, but I was pretty selective. I had a great time doing this, playing music and singing along as I went through the tedious job of creating the playlists and moving the songs there.

Tonight for dinner, I warmed up some chili. I put a hot dog in the chili as I was warming it up. It worked great.

Writing Prompt

Prompt: “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it’s true.” Paul Simon

I’m assuming that the quote is from a Paul Simon song, one I have never heard of, or if I ever have, my feeble old mind has forgotten it.

Until I was a teenager, we lived about a quarter of a mile from a pretty good-sized train depot. During my teens, we lived about 300 yards from that same depot. But, you know, trains are like chiming clocks in that after a few days or weeks, the train can go by and it doesn’t register with your conscious mind. It just becomes a part of the background of your life.

Now, however, I occasionally hear the sound of a train in the distance and must admit it has a certain appeal.

I think the sound we usually hear is the horn blaring a warning to “Get off the tracks!” There may also be the clatter of the wheels as the train passes by.

Why does everybody love this sound? Trains have a certain mystique about them. They paint a picture in our minds of travel to exotic places, people traveling in luxury while they dine with intriguing strangers, and even the thought of masked gunmen robbing the poor and defenseless being confronted by Roy Rogers or Gene Autry (boy, did I date myself on that?).

Do you love the sound of a train in a distance? Have you ever thought why?

Until next time…