A silent, sentimental journey

The Quiet Zone is now in effect on the Union Pacific tracks along Bellaire, Houston and West University Place.

Ann McCullough is elated. She lives with her husband and two daughters on Mulberry Lane. McCullough never minded the gentle sound of the trains clicking along--only the horns blasting at the Bissonnet and Bellaire Boulevard crossings. "None of the engineers were satisfied with simple short bursts," she explained. "They had individual styles involving long and complicated patterns, sometimes even signaling each other."

That echoes common complaint: that malicious engineers leaned on their horns from Beechnut to I-10, or visa versa–and always in the middle of those nights when insomnia hit.

Nonetheless, there's a certain "Petticoat Junction" nostalgia associated with trains. Obviously we have no Shady Rest Hotel, except the Bellaire Inn on Ferris. And Houston ain't the Pixley to West U's Hooterville.

Still, a surprising number of residents don't have disdain for these not-so-little trains that are rollin' down the track.

Amy Bush says she feel's a loss. "I've lived my whole life on Community Street in West U. and the train's a constant companion for me," she said. Rather than having their sleep disrupted, "the train sounds are comforting," to her and her children, Bush said.

Max Mckenzie agrees. His home backs up to the tracks at San Felipe. "The early morning horn is my wake-up call," McKenzie said. Although he understands people are annoyed with the horns and that the Quiet Zone is a nice idea, he believes it'll be short-lived. "When some idiot gets around the safeguards and is killed–it's over."

All this debate sent me on my own sentimental journey.

Tracks once ran along what's now Westpark and diverted into the warehouses hidden up in the northwest corner of Bellaire. We lived on Saxon just a few blocks away, and I remember tagging along with my big brothers, pockets loaded with pennies.

My second oldest brother, Tom, showed me how to place coins on the tracks. We sat and waited for the trains to go by, after which we retrieved our copper, flattened wafer-thin. Sometimes the pennies stuck to a wheel and we watched them roll away with the train.

Parked boxcars and flat beds made for high adventure, too. We climbed on them and played cowboys and Indians–pretending, of course, that the Indians were attacking the train.

With many rails being yanked up and the land converted to parks or commercial real estate, something else disappeared with the trains: dewberries. They are a kind of black berry that once grew thick beside the tracks. We picked bushels of them each spring and feasted on them until our lips and fingertips were purple, oblivious to what toxins there must have been from rail cargo.

The UP tracks are the last active line in proximity to Bellaire. The love-hate relationship with the horns has now ended, but there's still the comfort of gentle rolling thunder from tons and tons of steel chugging down the tracks.

Not as romantic as a whistle on a cool, crisp night. But enough so to still make me wonder how far off it is and where it is going–and where I've been.

 

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Copyright 2006 by David Falloure