CSX

The view from our bedroom of the CSX, also known to locals as the "Chicken Shit Express." In the background, you can see the redbrick structure of the town's old abandoned mill.

Manchester is a railroad town. The city fathers once had big plans for it to be a juggernaut of industry and commerce. Hence, the name. But now - no, not so much. But that old railroad still keeps on a-chuggin' - day in & day out. My parents live across the street from the switching station, which is also where I grew up.

When I was a boy, I went to sleep and woke up to the sounds of the CSX (which is also known as Chessie Systems Express). And during the day, I'd daydream about hopping aboard and riding the rails wherever they'd take me -Atlanta, Sarasota, Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anywhere, Everywhere. Didn't matter. I just wanted to see it all.

Graffiti sliding through this sleepy town at slow or breakneck speeds was always a lot like getting a gigantic telegram from a hundred or more strangers.As I grew, I watched it evolve. Wild Style tags sprayed onto boxcars in distant urban switching stations and railroad yards gave way to the fragmented bombing of the Nineties. Sometimes, whole cars rolled by that were covered in paint. And, of course, the hand of the novice showed up from time to time, untrained in the art form, solely conveying who was where, when, or who was of questionable sexual orientation or gave good head to whom and why - always in stark white letters than ran and dripped. Occasionally I'd see pieces that were started but never finished, probably because the cops or railway bulls spotted them and gave chase. Always root for the bad guy when watching trains. God is a hobo, you know.

A train yard makes a lot of noise, especially when a train at rest is put in motion. The engine, as it tugs on the boxcars and flatcars behind it, causes the hitches between each car to clank together. The effect is an earth-shaking chain reaction of clangs and rumblings that reverberates down the spine of the train for several hundred yards. If you are a child whose bedroom window has always been only a hundred feet or more from the railroad, this sound is as soothing as a gentle rain.