Posted on 03/07/2017 1:04:01 PM PST by Morgana
I might be mistaken, but I was always under the understanding that it is illegal to have headphones or earphones on when operating a vehicle. At least that’s what I was told in Virginia.
“His mother Fern said: ‘Jacob told the 911 operator and told us immediately that he was walking down the center of the tracks with his earbuds on.”
My heart’s in the ice house come hill or come valley
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley
On a cold winter’s morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow.
I heard sirens on the train track howl naked gettin’ nuder,
An altar boy’s been hit by a local commuter
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow.
- John Prine, “Chain of Sorrow”
I don't believe that story. Odds are he tried to beat the train and lost. Folks were just looking to transfer blame from the deceased.
On the first day of school in my hometown of Kearny, NJ in September of ‘65 three high school kids ducked under a railroad gate that was down. There was a train stopped at the station and these kids went around it but didn’t hear or see the train coming in the other direction and were killed. It was just horrible.
How sad. Trains are huge and mostly silent. People are like mosquitoes and cars are like pop cans.
Which is what I always believed.
Either way it was tragic.
This is so true. Back when I was a kid my friends and I, being just dumb kids used to walk along these same rail road tracks. It was in doing so that I learned how very quiet and at the same time how very fast and how very quickly a train can be upon you without warning. Needless to say as we got older we found other places to hang around than rail road tracks.
“...I was always under the understanding that it is illegal to have headphones or earphones on when operating a vehicle.”
I’m sure it is here in Tennessee as well, but so is going 80 in a 55 zone, and that is par for the course on the Memphis loop during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Police included...
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