Train 682

Ever want a glimpse of behind the scenes of a piece of a country? Take a train ride through its back yards, and see all that normally is hidden from sight.
On July 30, I caught sight of Portland with babies running free in diapers, discarded, rusting snowplows, hospital windows along the water, artwork gracing storage tanks, Rigby Yard close-up, and Old Orchard Beach, with drying motley-colored beach towels, overflowing dumpsters, an ocean beckoning, piles of twisted metal, early morning breakfast seekers, and Saco, with stacks and stacks of recyclable bottles, mills remade into condos along the river, tracks of waiting graffiti-laced tank cars, large women sunbathing, ghost signs hanging on bricks, and Wells, with pleading lonesome train whistles, wet fields of early morning grass, a lot filled with discarded cardboard boxes, overweight men in plastic chairs, and Dover, with deflated plastic swimming pools, a hustling town coming to life, delivery trucks waiting to unload, a deserted park playground, and Durham, with UNH, a woman with a homemade sign: "Hi Katie and Mimi", a sleeping college town in summer, piles of junk cars rusting in sunlight, smoking workers on back decks of restaurants, and Exeter, with impatient cars at crossings, kids waving from back porches, empty parking lots, abandoned buses, a car up on jacks, lines of laundry waving in desperation, and Haverhill, with sweating men laying track, boarded factory windows, shops longing for business, an old mill rendered to pile of rubble, a smoking woman waving to a train, and Woburn, with cement bridges going every which way, a shelter lost among the bushes, long lines of train cars on waiting tracks, trucks at loading docks, backyard treehouses, another train whooshing by, and Boston with North Station, a myriad of tracks, stacks of commuter trains, running footsteps, waving arms, yelling, faces coming alive, here.

*And that was just going down.