Way back when - 35 to 40 years ago - somewhere between the ages of 5 to 10, I was just another mischievous kid growing up here in the canyon. At the time I lived with my family on NE Alder Street. Also at that time the Rail Road was still active; still hauling logs down to the local mills.
It wasn’t unusual for a loaded train to park overnight, or even for the weekend, on the tracks to the East of the Rail Road Depot and South of, adjoining, our property. Trains are just the sort of thing that will draw a young boy’s attention. They got mine.
At first I used to just hang on our back fence and watch the trains. Sometimes the Engineers would even wave back to me and occasionally give a blast of the horn to my great delight. Nothing could ever compare to the awesome noise of a trains four tone horn in such close proximity. Later, despite and perhaps because of, but always mindful of my parents warnings, I got more daring.
My first adventure beyond our back fence was to do something I’d observed the neighbor children doing. Those kids would go down to the tracks and put pennies on the rails for the trains to run over. I’d seen the results and wanted some flat pennies of my own. So, against my parents admonishments not to do so, I crawled under our fence, climbed down the bank to the tracks and deposited my coins thereon. Climbing up was somewhat of a problem, but I made it, and just in time too.
The Engineer must have seen what I was up to that day because the train didn’t just pass on by as usual. Instead it went by, stopped, reversed, then stopped and proceeded on to the mills, running over my pennies three times with the Engine.
Boy, were those coins flat. Pennies about the diameter of a fifty cent piece, maybe a little bigger.