09/03/2024
I watched the train pass by on the Prairies of South Dakota. In my mind, in a time long, long ago. I can hear the whistle blow as it went through our little farming town in the middle of the night. A child of nine trains were a large part of my life. They came through our town every other day. As children, we ran along the trains and pretended we were the engineers, and we would blow the whistle woo woo woo the sound would make. Sometimes we were the bandits that rode our horses and chased the trains, but never quite caught them, even in our dreams. In the summertime we would gather, boys my age. We would lay pennies on the tracks and then stand back and watch the train come by. Afterwards we searched in vain for our skinny thin pennies. They were flattened like a sheet of paper. We whittled away many hours Defacing pennies in the name of childhood fun. As I grew older, the sound of trains seem to fade away with the setting sun. Semi trucks, started hauling what trains used to. Suddenly the tracks and the trains became a distant memory that echoed in the minds of children, my age. Today, out on the Prairie, the train still runs however, not with the purpose they once did. Children are missing, you do not see them standing alongside the tracks, holding coins in their hands, waiting for a train that’ll no longer come. Those days are gone forever and so too are the memories of an old man growing old.
