Wishing I Was On The Road

There are times when I wish I were on the road. The trains this time of night remind me of those feelings as I listen to their mournful whisper proceeding down the tracks through our town. I grew up never very far from the tracks(that is because out here on the Great American Desert there is no place to grow up other than close to the tracks. That is where civilization began and where it still is today)My next door neighbor, Milo Schull, was an engineer. He was home every week and his wife and he did not mind neighborhood children in their home as long as they were polite and respectful. Irene often baked pies and cookies and my best friend, Kim, and I would often benefit from her culinary efforts. As children we were taught a more than healthy respect for the railroad(by the time I was 10 there had been 6 RR related deaths in my town of 385 folks)and we were taught to stay far away from it. We, of course as children, paid no heed to the adult advice and played right in the midst of the locomotives crushing pennies and feeling the thunder of the rails in over passes as we laid as close as one would dare another to the tracks. Fun, one might think so, but one kid lost a leg, another an arm, and David(another good buddy fell off the top and broke many pieces of his body trying to keep up with an accerating train as we all hopped across the tops and ran down ladders. God has a way of teaching us many lessons. For the most part I have all my parts and survived the dares and challenges of youth only to emerge into adulthood ready to take on any challenge. The greatest challenge is that of maintaining one's faith in the very midst of circumstances beyond our control. Lose a limb, lose a life, lose a child, lose a wife; and another song is born from speaking out here. I thank you for the opportunity to believe that there are people who care. Have I ever looked back and attempted to contact any of the people that I write about tonight.....NO. That is not because I do not care, it is because I would prefer to remember them as they were then, and now, right now, in my memory. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

January 14, 2007