I can recollect at the fewest 100 times, as a kid, growing up just south of the tracks, when Russell and me would be dashing for our lives, or so we would imagine. The freight yards blended with all kinds of people and trucks, mostly hanging around to get loaded with all the things that came off the trains. There was enough going on all over this place, at least for most the day, to keep a hundred guys focused making a living.
Russell’s pops was one of them and my father used to be also. The train air horns from the locomotives would sound off in a sequence of blasts and the trucks wouldn’t be far behind, as if to say yea, yea we hear ya. I always imagined if those series of air horns blasting from the trains was signal for anything, or just some rude wake up shout to shake up the dock laborers.
You know, I mean, they squandered a bunch of hours talking about what must have been important stuff until those air horns sounded off, then like bees from a aggravated hive, they would leap to the closest thing to do and be doing all intense like.
I’m sure we had better stuff to do than observe them buzz around, but it sure was a kick in the pants, and we would imagine they were our soldiers, or maybe our workers of some sort, you know when your a King or a General or something, you had to have folks to do what you said, right?
