railroads

When I first pulled into Berkeley five months ago (“C’mon Mick, it really hasn’t been five months already, has it? Oh. Yeah. Damn.�), I heard sounds I hadn’t heard for years and didn’t expect to hear here. The horns of freight trains. And I let it slip, there was still a part of me that wanted to sneak into a boxcar and let it take me where it would. For the hell of it.

read more

I’d heard all kinds of things about Berkeley before actually moving out here from Maine last fall. The University. The student protests. The street people. The Grateful Dead. The astronomical house prices – and just-about-everything-else-in-the-known-universe prices. Even the weather. So I thought I knew what I was in for.

No one said a thing about the trains.

The hootin’ from the long freights of the Union Pacific starts around ten at night and doesn’t stop until six or so in the morning. Or maybe it doesn’t stop even then, but gets drowned out by the drone of the freeways. The rail lines are near the shore of the Bay, while the house I’m living in (with those geriatric cats) is near the base of the hills. But it still sounds like those locomotives are about to roll through the bedroom window. On and on the railroad chorus goes while I lie awake in bed, listening.

read more