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May, 2000

Remembering Joan

Yesterday, returning from lunch at Balistreri's, I was stopped by a passing Soo Line freight train. How many times, I wondered, had Joan and I sat here as the long train trundled by?

The nearest Soo Line track is about one mile south of our home. Sometimes you'd never know it was there; at other times when the atmospherics are good, you can hear its laden cars rumble and its horn bray as if the train was only a few blocks away. Often on good nights, in the early morning hours, I listen to that horn, each hoot lasting a beat longer than I expect, and its plaintive sound reminds me always and anew of Joan. She loved the sound of trains.