Lonesome sound

"Words and music by Hank Williams"

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill

He sounds too blue to fly

The midnight train is whining low

I'm so lonesome I could cry

I've never seen a night so long

When time goes crawling by

The moon just went behind a cloud

To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep

When leaves begin to die?

Like me he's lost the will to live

I'm so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling Star

lights up a purple sky

And as I wonder where you are

I'm so lonesome I could cry

On nights like this when I hear the train I think of this song. So old but so fitting. It came to us over a battery operated radio and the sound was so mournful.
Hank Williams had a sad mournful tone.
We always listened to the Grand Old Opry. A wonderful time in history of country music. A time when it was really taking hold in America.

Right now It is ten o'clock and I should be asleep.
However I am not restful tonight, I am feeling a lonesome, mournful feeling.
In the distance I hear a train whistle. It reminds me of a time long ago. I am not sure when I heard that sound so often, but I know in my childhood it was there.
When I was really young, before school age, we lived in Leola in a mill yard. I have vague memories. When we say children cant remember, we are wrong, so wrong. I remember but all the pieces do not fit.
I hear a train whistle, I hear a rumble, I smell logs and newly cut wood, I remember the sounds and smells.
One day I was visiting a cousin of mine. He is lots older and more like an uncle in age.
I asked him, "Did we ever live by a train and by a log stack?" He looked at me and said
"Yes you did, I can show you where the little white house stood. It was at the mill in Leola."
I again asked, "Did the logs ever roll?"
Again "Yes they did , a few times," I can remember that. I remember my Mom was worried about the kids getting on the log stacks and the danger that was involved. I am snot sure how long we lived there but I am sure it was not long.
One we had the train in our back yard, and two it was unsafe for children to roam a mill yard.

Memories are so precious.
I love to hear that train whistle blow. It is so nostalgic.
When David and I married, we moved to California, our first night in California, we stayed by a train track and a whistle stop. I never remembered the train tracks we crossed that night as we arrived at our little house.
In the middle of the night, the train came through. I came out of bed Screaming and shaking. It took a few minutes for David to grab me and calm me down.
I just knew the end of the world had come and I was being punished for leaving my home where I grew up and my Mom.
It was a long night and every night the train came though and every night I was out of that bed screaming and startled.
Needless to say we did not live there long. It was too hard.

My memories are so precious, each whistle, each fragrant odor of newly cut timber.
My memories make me who I am, a person in touch with my past. A person who appreciates the beauty of a train whistle or the sound of a mill whistle, we also hear that every day.
I lived it, I have it embedded in my memory.
Sweet Sweet memories.