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One day a train came off the tracks and made a giant mess. Twasn't much later that we had a giant mess in our front pasture, as train officials generally waste no time clearing the tracks after derailments.
The railroad folks needed a place to push all that stuff out of the way, so they asked if they could use our pasture, promising to clean everything up and rebuild our fence.
They also gave us some salvage lumber from the thousands of board feet which came off from the derailed cars. We still have a stack of those boards in our shed, and every once in a while find a use for them.
Having a train derail in one's front yard adds just a little excitement to an otherwise routine day. We experienced several less-than-routine days as all the heavy equipment came and worked through the night to remove the mess from the tracks, preparing them for use as quickly as possible.
We also enjoyed standing guard over the huge pile of debris aka pieces of lumber pushed into our pasture.
Life was especially fun as dusk turned to darkness. We often would see cars coming down the road, slowing down and stopping.
A few times we stationed ourselves in the pasture, out of view, BEHIND the big pile. As curiosity/free lumber seekers came ambling into the field, we loved to watch their expressions and listen to their stories of why they were there the instant they would spot us suddenly appearing from behind the big pile of lumber.
In one case, an individual covered up his license plates with plastic bags and parked on the road near our field. I happened to be coming home that evening when he first parked and quickly noticed the covered license plates.
It took me a couple trips driving back and forth past him, eyeing his vehicle, to make him decide that it might be wise to leave the area, covered license plates and all. Happily, we did not see him come back.
The railroad folks were great about honoring their promises, and eventually we had a fence around our pasture far better than anything we could construct.
Living next to train tracks inspired many memories----good and bad.
We loved it when excursion trains would occasionally pass through and pull up for a stop on the tracks while someone got off and caught a cab.
It was fun to ride by on a horse waving at those passengers from wherever and wonder what was going through their minds as they waved back.
On the negative side, we hated the constant, seemingly endless blocking of our main crossing when coming home or going to town. It also wasn't cool when a train killed our deaf dog or when Annie's horse got his hooves stuck between the rails and the ties in the crossing down the road.
When that happened, an adamant neighbor told the officials who refused, over the phone, to stop trains for a horse that the horse would have a 16-year-old rider standing beside him.
For some reason they must have gotten the message, as we had no troubles from speeding trains during that frantic hour as about a dozen volunteers worked furiously to loosen Casey's two front hooves from the tracks.
All turned out well with that incident.
I'd have to say that the derailment incident ranks right up there with my experiences living next to the railroad. And, it turned out okay too.
My brother Mike's birthday is coming up this Sunday so I decided to throw in this painting by our mother. It was used for the cover of my first book, and I've always loved it.
This image so eloquently represents our childhood on the North Boyer farm with our beloved Bossy. The cow bell, the milk bucket, the stump, the old barn, the bibs, the mops of youthful hair (Mike, the red head)---memories don't get much better.
Happy Thursday.
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