Every day a few trains rumble by, and we can see them coming from Mama's porch.  Even after 60 years, the track still delights and mystifies me.

Today there are flashing red lights and crossing bars, but when I was growing up the only warning was a small faded yellow sign that the weeds pretty much overtook in the summer.

I don't recall any tragic events ever taking place at this crossing, but boy were there ever a lot of adventures!

It would be impossible to guess how many times we've walked these tracks...balancing on the rails, hopping from cross tie to cross tie, rushing down the steep sides into the ditch when we felt first and then heard the rumbling of an approaching train.

Sometimes me and my County Line neighbor friends Bobby and Kathy (you can see what was their property in the right of this photo...I was always so jealous that they lived right beside the tracks...) would pack a lunch and walk the tracks about a mile to a woods.  Bobby was our fearless leader, being 2 years older than me and, of course, a boy.  Mama trusted Bobby to take care of us (little did she know...).  We didn't know for sure who owned the woods, but surely they didn't mind three almost-teenagers hanging out in them for awhile.  We'd play in the creek and eat our lunch sitting on logs.  Once Mama baked an oatmeal cake for us to take along and the three of us ate the whole delicious thing!  But the most fun of all was swinging on the vines that hung down, pretending to be Tarzan and a couple of Janes.  A couple of hours later, we'd walk the tracks back home, dirty and tired but smiling from our day's explorations.

We were adventurers, even at that young age.  And now we've all three long since grown up, each of us living our own adventures these past 50 years.  Bobby and Kathy had head-starts on me, both of them extensively traveling the globe and doing all sorts of exciting things...now that my nest is empty, I'm trying to catch up! 

I think, next summer, I'll take my grandkids to walk these tracks with me again.  

Adventure always awaits.