Counting the train cars as they go by

I like trains. I like watching them go by. I like hearing their whistle late at night, even though it’s a rather lonely sound. I wonder where they’re going. I remember the feeling of riding on them, though it has been many years since I’ve been on a train.

When I was a teenager, my school bus, on one particular road, often had to stop for a train. I would try to count the cars as they went by. I usually lost count at some point, becoming confused as the train sped by, wondering if I had skipped a car or counted one twice.

These memories started a stream of memories that fed my Random 5 this week as I join once again with Nancy Claeys’ blog.

One

Larry and I enjoyed a picnic in the park on Sunday. I decided to get some shots of the train trestle that crosses part of the park.

I like train trestles. I like the sound the trains make as they cross them. I like the architecture, every part needed to hold up the weight of the train.

Two

I’ve been on a train three times. When I was in elementary school, my class took a school bus ride to Monroe, Virginia, in a county near my county. We got on a train there and took the short ride into Lynchburg, where the school bus picked us up. I was so excited.

In 1976, my family and I took two trips on Amtrak, one to Philadelphia and one to New York City. I loved visiting other parts of the country and experiencing the big city.

Three

I remember once sitting in the car, in the backseat, as a child and listening to my father count the train cars as they went by. He liked to count things.

My mother has told me that my paternal grandfather, my father’s father, counted a lot, too, including tobacco sticks as they were put up in the tobacco barn.

Four

One of my OCD compulsions is counting. I used to compulsively count letters on signs, working and reworking to get the total number to come out to a number divisible by three. Three was my magic number.

I also counted the steps I took, stairs I climbed, window panes, so many things. I did it to try to calm anxiety.

I don’t know if my father and grandfather had magic numbers, or if they felt a compulsion to count. But I wonder. I wonder if I inherited my tendency to develop OCD from my father’s family.

Five

When I was 12 or 13, my father asked me to count the cows. He had suffered a major stroke and was housebound for a time.

He raised Black Angus cows. No one else was home at the time, and he was worried about all of the cows being in the pasture.

I had such a hard time counting them. They kept moving, and I kept recounting. It took me a long time.

And my OCD kicked in. I worried so much that I would get it wrong and something would happen to a wandering cow and it would be my fault.

What, if anything, do you like about trains and train trestles?