Trains and thunderstorms and rainy afternoons

Have you ever noticed that the sound rain makes on a metal roof is like the music a train makes as it speed on its way? They both have that hypnotic effect that kinda soothes the tormented mind. Or else drives you crazy with the monotonous clicks and clacks and drip, drip, drips. I personally can go either way depending on my state of mind. When I was in Junior High (middle school) we lived near a railroad switching yard, don’t know which railway it was; way too many years ago. Late at night in winter the cold made the trains seem like they were next door. You could hear every groan of the brakes being applied and the noise of the couplings coming together and every car in line banging from the force of the train coming together. Don’t remember how I felt about it, but it was company on a sleepless night.

When I was older and we lived in Virginia hearing the trains meant a storm was coming. I don’t know the technical reasons but just before a thunderstorm, you could hear the trains like they were in the front yard. Skip ahead a hundred years and we are living in a small town a ways from the railroad. That first winter it sounded like the trains were in the living room some nights. But after a while the only time you hear the train is when it isn’t there. The silence becomes deafening. Now we live just upriver from a railroad bridge. When I hear the trains now, and they still sound like they are in the front yard some nights, it is one of those comfort sounds (like mac and cheese only with sound instead of cheese). As long as the trains go by, even the ones that blow their horns at 1:30am, all is well.

Thunderstorms are another matter. I mostly like a thunderstorm. When we lived in Florida, we would sit on the back porch, sorry lanai, and watch the lightening and try to figure out how far away it is by how long until we hear the thunder. Our dogs, on the other hand, HATE thunderstorms. The older one will run into the bathroom or the office at the first hint of thunder. Both of them would sleep in the bed with us during thunderstorms, if we let them. A couple of times, we have heard a thunderclap and then felt a “whoomp” as two canine bodies fly into the bed with us. Okay we do let them in the bedroom, but not in the bed with us. Our dogs are bird dogs by breed, you would think that they would be bred for the kind of noise made by a shotgun, or thunder. Nope, both our dogs are scaredy-cats. They will protect us from the Fedex driver, and the people who walked by 20 minutes ago but not the weather.

When I was a kid, a rainy summer afternoon was a day off. I would sit on the front porch (when we had one) and listen to the rain and watch the drops hit the puddles and let the smell of the cleansed air and the soft patter of the raindrops hitting the leaves take away my troubles. Okay at least as many troubles as the average 14 year old has. Now, I am no longer 14 and here I sit watching the drops hit the river and listening to them hit the leaves and the metal roof and the way the rain changes the sound of car tires and all I need now is the train to go by and I’m good.

See y’all later.