I suppose that every hometown of every child holds certain favorite hiding places, or short cuts, or little-known doors or cubbyholes or secret passageways or whatever, and Auburn was no exception.
One of my favorite such places was the train tunnel that ran under Palm Avenue and the Auburn reservoir, and came out just this side of Gasoline Alley, a wide spot on Highway 49 about a mile north of where I lived. Tales of being caught in the tunnel when the train came were standard Auburn lore; one of my older cousins' cousin swore that he got caught one day with the train coming, and had to lie flat on his stomach between the tracks while the train passed over him. I believed him until I was about ten or so, when I started to notice that each time he told the story some of the details were different, such as whether it was night or day, with friends or alone; that sort of thing.
Being somewhat timid by nature, I never would have taken the dare to run through the tunnel if I was alone, but crowd psychology is different than individual psychology, and the herd instinct won out. It was a winter day after school, and several of us 8th graders were out of basketball practice because of teacher conferences. Since we didn't have to practice, we naturally looked around for something else to do, and Ken, our point guard, made the dumbest suggestion of all: "Let's run out to Gasoline Alley & back through the train tunnel."
So off we went, licketty-split down Palm Avenue, past my house, past the yellow bus shed where bus #9 picked us all up every school morning, and up the hill across from Dr. Dunevitz' house, where we dropped down to the tracks and began our run through the train tunnel. The train came twice a day, once early morning and once about 10 PM. It was only about 4 PM then, so we knew there was no danger of a train coming.
What we didn't know was that a group of transients, guys who road the rails from one town to another; we called them "hobos"; had taken residence in the tunnel. They apparently were sitting or lying against one wall of the tunnel, perhaps 50 feet or so from the end of the tunnel we were entering, so they had enough light to function and yet no one looking into the dark tunnel from the bright daylight outside could see them.
Never Open An Outhouse Door Without Knocking by Duane Shinn
Next Page...
Home | About me | My Portfolio | Blog | News | Contact
Copyright © 101-damnations.com
