Y’all, I would like to think that I’m a smart woman. I am a smart woman in my own way, but my Daddy was right. He said that words go in one ear and out the other for me. My little pea brain only processes the information that I need right now. I have a hard time keeping my mind on track, and I am often oblivious to niggling little details–ones that just might make a difference later.

A case in point was when my Future Husband Now Ex (I’ll just call him Mr. X) and I were hunting for our very first house. I was only eighteen years old and had always lived in my Daddy’s house, so I didn’t have any idea what to seek. If I had watched HGTV back then, I would have known that the main thing to look for was “Location, Location, Location.” But, this was back in the Stone Age and there was no HGTV.

We found a lovely little two-bedroom, one bath house on a corner lot. It needed paint, but it was pretty. The cost was a whopping $7,000. This was in 1973. Today a house like that would cost $60,000 or more, but back then $7,000 was a small fortune. We wanted it, but had no idea if we would be able to make the $70/month house payments (I would kill for a house payment that was only $70 now…wait, no I wouldn’t. I’m kind.).

It burns me that these days you can’t buy a decent new car for that price. And, the car doesn’t have indoor plumbing! But, I guess you could sleep in it if you had to do so.

Anyway, we bought that house, and Mr. X moved in. I came over in the daytime and helped clean, paint and “decorate.” My idea of decorating back then was odd in retrospect. I can’t even bear to think about it. I never spent any time outside while I was there, because I was concentrating on making my nest livable. If I had gone outside, I might have noticed something that would later annoy me.

Fast forward to the night we returned from our honeymoon in Colorado. We had been driving all day, and it was late at night when we arrived. The long drive had made for frazzled nerves. When we carried our bags up on the porch and opened the door, the porch light wouldn’t come on. In fact, none of the lights in the house would come on.

Further inspection showed that all the light bulbs had been unscrewed in the house. On top of that, there were streamers, balloons, and rice all over the place. The bathroom mirror had “Just Married” written all over it in soap. This is what we got for hiding the car so it wouldn’t get decorated. Mr. X’s mother, who was the only person with a key to the house, had let his friends in to play their practical jokes.

I was even less amused when I tried to crawl into bed to discover that Mr. X’s friends had short-sheeted the bed and spread rice all over that, too. I was not in a pretty mood by the time I got to bed. We both were fast asleep immediately.

During the middle of the night, there was a jarring sound that jolted me upright in the bed.

“WHOO WHOOOOOOOO chug a chug a WHOO WHOOOOO”

I wondered, “Oh Heck! What are his ‘friend’s’ doing now?”

I threw back the curtains, and screamed,
“Oh My Lord, there’s a TRAIN outside our window!”

Mr. X rolled over and pulled the covers over his head muttering at me as if I were an idiot, “Of course there is. It goes past every night.”

I had no clue there was a track out there! I tried to go back to sleep, but about the time I drifted off, here came the train the other direction.

“WHOO WHOOOOOOOO chug a chug a WHOO WHOOOOO”

The next morning, I went outside and walked across the side street. Sure enough, there was a train track. It was a spur that went from downtown Gainesville to a paint factory on the other side of the highway. I had never noticed it, because the trains only traveled it at night. Of course.

For the seven years that we lived there, that train went down the track each night. It’s whistle split the air as it crossed the street on which we lived. To tell you the truth, I got used to the sound, and learned to sleep right through it.

When we later moved to Lindsay, Texas, I missed the sound of the train. I much preferred it to the recorded chimes that the Catholic Church broadcast at full blast from it’s steeple every hour.

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The theme for Manic Monday is “track.” Mo at It’s A Blog Eat Blog World gives us words to use as a prompt for writing. I worked on the theme, trying to come up with other ideas, but couldn’t keep my mind on track.

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