hard pressed

I've always loved trains and even railroad tracks.  There's a full southern novel I could write around that.

In the first house I few up in, the train ran behind our house and I would run to the window at every horn sound.  My parents' house now, the one I really grew up in, is much further away, but in the clear Nashville night you can hear the rumble on the tracks and it comforts me as I sleep.

There is a profound relationship between me, my grandmother, and the trains.  And their horn sounded a final farewell as both her final husband died, and she herself was lowered into her final resting place.

At my cousins' house, the Big One, the train runs along the very front of the property, down the hill, past the creek.  Mom would tell me stories of she and the cousins as children putting pennies on the tracks and saving the smooth, pressed results as treasures.

I've always wanted to do that.

I took the day after my birthday off as a personal all-for-me day, and in the late afternoon warm sun I sat placidly with my book and a coffee in Jane Warner Plaza in the Castro (AKA the Promenade) enjoying the blissful afternoon, some peace, and the light parade of people.  PeeDee joined me for a sit, and we watched the historic F-Markey cards pulse by on their routine.

I've always wondered what would happen if you put a penny on a muni track.  The modern cars have rail brooms before their wheels, but the antique cars do not.


Two cents had never bought this much fun.