runaway railroad

There was a train that cut right through Spokane, a train that rattled my windows at night and became ambiance in the 100 plus degree heat without air-conditioning and the hope to catch a breeze to ease me to sleep.

It could be heard anywhere in the city but was loudest by the... let's call it... Jazz at the Junction, one of the two places I bartended full time the summer after graduating college.

If I knew now what I knew then about Spokane, about what the strength of the train signal meant about where I was in town--there's no chance I would've been working in Hillyard. (To see what I mean about Hillyard, click here)

I find it quite interesting, really... I had absolutely no idea that my drive up East Illinois each day led me into a much less safer part of town. The road overlooked much of the city and had some of the most scenic views in Spokane, other than the Falls and the Centennial Trail--then you passed the railroad tracks and reached a fork in the road.

For what's it's worth, Jazz had the best security of any place I've ever worked. We were a family--an odd one at that--but a family. From the Swedish mail order bride to the Roller Derby chef, from the stand-up comedian owner to a pregnant cocktail waitress. Don't forget the head of security--the biggest teddy bear you'll ever meet who followed creepers around or kicked them out with just one word. Like many of the places I've been or things I've done, I can't tell you how thankful I was for this family that summer, true fun friends to work with even if we were from all walks of life and working at a music/comedy/dancing joint tailored towards those around 40 to 55 years young.

I heard that train after a long night working, as we sat at the bar with our shifters. Through all three rooms of my one bedroom apartment, though it never woke me like the neighbor's new kitten that would crawl through my windows and hop onto my bed at night. I heard it when I moved into cute little house on Augusta and we spent the entire endless summer playing games in the yard and following the Centennial Trail down to happy hour at Shenanigan's. And I heard it the week I spent packing all of my things into 22 boxes that I shipped across the country deciding which path to take, which next step to choose.

There was a train that cut right through Tuscaloosa, a train that interrupted my drive to work and set me behind every morning that I would take pictures of with my brand new Blackberry and send to my friend P. The tracks that divided the university from the rest of the city, the tracks a tornado fell right beside a year after I'd left.

And there's a train that cuts through Norman, a train that occasionally interrupts me on the way to work with much less faulty lines than that train in Tuscaloosa. No more stopped cars in the middle of the railroad crossing or lights flashing and no caution arms down, cars inching closer and closer to see if the can screech across before anything comes, if anything is ever to come. The train here in Norman is one that you can hear at the Mont, where I came for my interview and brought my family on their first trip to town; a train that runs directly beside new high rise apartments being built by campus. It's headlights blind me when it rushes by the gym in the early hours of the morning and I count cars to make the time on the treadmill go faster. I can hear it through closed windows if I sit back in silence or occasionally during the top of an inning at softball, the second half of a soccer game, or the final minutes in the fourth quarter of an Oklahoma football game, but only every once in a while. These trains, a lullaby now as opposed to an alarm clock, hurrying across the plains.