Having recently watched “Stand By Me”, the train dodge on the trestle scene brought back rememberances as an adolescent hanging out at this trestle with my friends. On a Friday or Saturday night for us, it was the place to be. School wasn’t our bag anymore having hated it leaving it for good the first opportunity we got, however foolishly.
In Columbus, Mississippi there wasn’t much for middle aged adolescents to do unless you were one of the rich kids who had the money to cruise around Sonic, go to the theater, watch your cheerleading girlfriend from the sides of the football field or meet up at the Kmart parking lot, chugging away beer lifted from your dads pontoon boat. Good ol’ chop off the block normal kids having clean cut fun. Being “normal” meant your folks worked at one of the few high end jobs in town and the family attended ball games at Propst Park during the week and warmed the pews of one of the numerous oversized churches on Sunday.
If not that, you had the option of delinquencies most other kids without money partook in. None of us, rich or poor, who didn’t even so much as have peach fuzz, qualified for the bigger trinkets of Bob’s Place. So we found ourselves stuck somewhere in the middle, money out of reach and hanging out in juvenile court non too appealing either. So the trestle was our Mecca. So we stuck to ourselves…even if we were kind of our own problems. Dull moths with broken wings underneath the street light hoping to turn into colorful soaring butterflies.
We were away from the hassles of school and the reality of working for a living hadn’t quite dawned on us yet. The innocence of childhood was on its way out but we wanted more shinier things but the dinginess of responsibility to obtain those things repulsed us. A W-2 may as well been a crucifix soaked in holy water to our shallow group of friends . Life would come eventually and for now we just tried to push it out of our minds. That lovely confusion between childhood and adulthood.
We had nothing, sitting around in second hand clothing and were going nowhere fast and that’s what bonded us together for good or bad. Of course that would have to self destruct too, yet another reality yet to descend upon us struggling to get through our thick skulls harboring a sea half intellectualism.
My first lesson in seeing things starting fade and get the ball rolling in taking on life was a night at the trestle when night I played a live version of “Texas Radio & The Big Beat” by The Doors on my portable jam box, (remember those?) and my friends protesting my playing old music and asking I turn it off and put the radio on 94.1FM as they liked that DJ better. I didn’t of course as I was feeling my way around of “bucking the system” and not conforming. Eschewing “King Of The Mountain” I suppose.
If you know the song it talks about evolution. Even at the time I wasn’t quite fully awake and aware of its meaning though it just seemed fitting for the time if only subconsciously. Someone has to be odd as a cod even if I felt the small objection was the opening shot of my version of seeing The Beatles starting to fall apart.
But after it trickled away we sat around talking about what happened to former classmates in jail too damn young or others wrapped around a telephone pole too damn soon, planning our next get together at Lee Mall the following weekend, how our siblings annoyed us, about our older brothers threatening us as the big stick when our moms will power to discipline waned or had no effect.
Now I understood “Yakety Yak” but didn’t have it handy to send through the Panasonic’s speakers. Just writing that I can hear their sighs. Then we would babble on about where we’d go instead of the trestle if any of us actually had a car instead of the shoes on our feet.
We weren’t in Vegas, Paris, stumbling along Sunset Strip or watching the sunrise at the Rivera, even so much as at a movie theater but on this trestle those realities were a world away. We were right where we wanted to be, away from the neon lights and vacant ball fields. So usually we’d all agree that going to the store for a cold drink and coming back would be nice but after all who’d have the money for one let alone gas money to get there. We didn’t have anything but we had the world and didn’t know it looking back at it now.
Just talking away as catfish aggressively slapped the water below and fireflies lazily danced around the honey suckle bushes. No group of us mindlessly scrolling away the hours in an incandescent glowing phones with heads dropped in silence together. Nope, just actually talking, laughing, pondering, crying and interacting with one another.
We were just on some old M&O trestle that had seen many owners while watching the rippling slivers of the Tombigbee River reflecting in the moonlight. I was probably the only one who questioned how many moons that old trestle had seen let alone different owners. Today I question what the heck we were thinking trespassing let alone using that thing as our personal tree house.
What we all did know it was as far away in our small town that we could get from all the nagging and hassles of adolescent life. We were where we wanted to be as we babbled aimlessly til 2am or later. At some point predawn we’d relent, church would be dismissed and find ourselves treading homewards through thick morning dew and fog that slowly faded the further you got away from Big Tom as some locals called the river. We’d put the trestle to our backs til next time.
The trestle, of course, is a star in its own right but served its own purpose to us on those nights. Rarely though did its purpose and ours cross paths however you had to be ready for that sudden eventuality. Even though the trains seemed infrequent, it foolishly caused us to feel they were almost a myth. To the east were multiple grade crossings in the distance which gave plenty of notice to that of an approaching MidSouth freight heading back to Artesia from Tuscaloosa.
To the west the nearest crossing before the trestle that required Rule 14L was Robinson Rd 4-5 miles away so fat chance on hearing Nathan or Leslie giving an ominous heads up. The first warning would be the sound of distant prime movers beating in a rhythm caged in metal hoods. But that could be anywhere. It could be the late night Amory/Magnolia Turn on the BN heading north through town, it too 4-5 miles away. The C&G, GTRA and NS were all tucked safely away in their beds for the night.
The answer usually came as the beating rhythm got closer and only then if not on a night drowned out by some god forsaken oldies someone was blaring. If that were the case then the next warning would be that of an increasingly bright glow brought to you in part by Pyle National. This meant hunkering down below the tracks on the center column hoping this worn and weary structure decided this wasn’t the night it was tired and didn’t want to play anymore. At best you could try to make it to the east side of the trestle before the monster came rumbling from beneath the bed.
It’s not that the train speeds on that MidSouth line were particularly fast. It wasn’t like the Burlington Northern rail line, where as once trains cleared the city limits, the speed was “Get it out of Granny and move your fanny.” The MidSouth line at that time was pretty much mostly 10mph across all of Lowndes County, Mississippi U.S. of A. The problem was that you didn’t really see the lights of their frog eyes until it was ending it’s south to north swing out of the curve onto the timber approach. After a few occasions of this it resulted in music being played at a more reasonable level from there on.
Hiding out underneath as the train rumbled over felt as much as I could imagine of being on the Ho Chi Minh trail as a recipient of a B-52D puking its 108 500lb bombs to inconvenience your rice and fish head supper. I can remember my friends chiding me as I nervously sat on the column, “What’s wrong Martin? Didn’t cha like trains?” as Operation Rolling Thunder commenced above our heads. Then almost as soon as it began it was over with us scurrying back out from our bomb shelter. The 1905 built structure had done its job yet again without fail.
By the time I’d taken this image nearly a quarter century had passed. Eventually time would shove us into being productive members of society. Some of us went easily and others among us had to be shouted out into the icy cold like a jump master in the doorway of a perfectly good plane yelling at the squeamish. We all landed different places and regrettably we never maintained contact with one another. Life is funny that way sometimes.
The trestle was still standing doing its job unlike most of the old haunts that had been torn down, burnt down, cleared out, paved over or repurposed. As Alabama Southern’s Artesia/Reform Turn makes its way across the old haunt in this November 2018 view, I was no longer a resident of my old hometown. I hadn’t been for 12 years at that point. Like the train and my old friends, I was just passing through.
*hums a few notes of “The Long And Winding Road” to myself*
