"I'd seen and heard trains from my earliest childhood days and the sight and sound of them always made me feel secure. The boxcars, the iron ore cars, freight cars, passenger trains, Pullman cars. There was no place you could go in my hometown without at least some part of the day have to stop at intersections and wait for the long trains to pass...The sound of trains off in the distance more or less made me feel at home, like nothing was missing, like I was at some level place, never in any significant danger and that everything was fitting together."~Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One
My thoughts exactly. I could not agree more. Although the train whistles are almost annoyingly loud here some days, I would miss them if they were gone. I need that noise. I can't sleep if it's too quiet. I need to know life is going on still outside my windows. There's some sort of strange comfort in the whole thing. At the real root of it though, as Dylan points out, is that it makes me feel at home. It makes me feel safe because it makes me think of LaGrange, my family, my childhood. I can connect so many memories to trains or railroad tracks. Very few of them actually have to do specifically with the trains, but since they were such a presence it all connects back. I suppose it is sort of like the whole idea of how a smell can stimulate a memory. What makes a sound any different?
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