Humpyard Dreams

The railroad slang for it is a "hump yard" (huh huh, huh huh), the place where they couple and decouple trains: there's a hill (aka "the hump") that one track goes over, and the RR rolls the cars up one side, then down the other side to the waiting trains. There's a hump yard along the Lehigh just west of town, and you can hear the booming from the woods at Sals, as the boxcars crash into each other.

 

Some nights when it's really quiet and still, you can hear trains moving across the valley, the train whistles etc, and it's a lonesome but reassuring sound, part of falling asleep -- like rain and faraway thunder when you're cozy in bed. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was a night like that, really quiet out except for the crickets, but then in the distance, just at the limit of hearing, I heard the crash of boxcars in the hump yard. Coming at sporadic intervals like a dripping faucet, it brought me fully awake, and then drove me nuts as I kept waiting for each next shoe to drop.

 

Got up this morning, and I'm still not sure I didn't just dream it...

 

In other news, I just got a flu shot. Five bucks in the cafeteria, and hopefully it won't give me the flu. Tonight is the gym, followed by Two-Brew Tuesday, aka $3.00 Taco Night, at the Brew Works. (Anne was out there yesterday, but I stayed in, and got another major chunk of that MTO thing done before an early bedtime.)