Rumble

When I'm traveling, I miss the rumble of the train, especially when I have trouble sleeping. Inside the comfort of my adobe building, I hear the soft sounds of the train, but mostly I feel the bed shake a little bit. It is a good feeling, probably appealing to some distant memory of being rocked to sleep.

Outside on the street, conversations stop in mid-sentence when the trains burst through town. They're that LOUD. You can't hear anything over them, especially when the whistles blow. None of the trains stop in Van Horn, but the people of Van Horn stop for them many times a day.

Van Horn's history is all about moving people from place to place. First it was a passageway for Indians, then the military, then the railroad. Next came the highway, then the freeway (I-10) and now, maybe, space.

Tracks parallel many of the highways in the region, sometimes so far out in the distance the trains look tiny. Other places the rails are just adjacent to the road, so at night, you can get tricked into thinking a huge truck is barreling towards you without caution. But instead, the road inevitably curves and you realize there's been no danger of collision at all. You're on parallel tracks.