"If you need me, just whistle..."

There's an old movie with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with that line of dialogue in it...... Bacall is walking out the door and she looks back at Bogart and says those words. I don't remember the name of the movie, but I do remember that Bogart's character was named Harry, but Bacall calls him Steve in that scene, which was the middle name of Bogart's character in that film. "Harry Steven" something-or-other.  Bogart never looked like a "Harry," and "Steve" does seem to fit him better, but then.... "Humphrey" just didn't ever seem to fit Bogart either, but somehow it worked.

But this entry isn't about Bogart and Bacall........ I was trying to fall back to sleep after the train whistle went blasting through the hills, and I just got to thinking about that old movie.

The first train went by around midnight, and that's when I woke up.  The second train blasted its horn about half an hour ago at two o'clock, and I was wide awake for that one because I never got back to sleep after the midnight whistle.

When we first moved out here, the train whistles were distant and poignant, more like a lullaby that came drifting through the woods.  After the whistle, you could hear the coyotes howling in the distance, off in the woods, and their howling seemed lonely and hopeful.

For the past year or so, the train whistles have gotten urgent, loud, and downright rude. Gone are those soft whistles that reminded you that life goes on in the country hills even in the middle of the night. Now the engineers are blasting an air-horn that sounds like the Titanic is about to hit an iceberg again.  These obnoxious blasts aren't being followed by the howls of the coyotes because those poor animals are probably running the other way, going deeper into the woods to get some peace and quiet in the middle of the night.

I'm hoping to get back to sleep.... I'm hoping that there will be no more trains, at least until the sun comes up. As that old saying goes.... Hope floats.