Hill Country Living
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the greatest thing to happen to Water Valley in the past several weeks is the new train whistle that blows throughout town at 5 p.m. every day! Who thought to do that? Seems like a Grant Thompson thing. I think it’s really great!
Even though I’m not from Water Valley, I did grow up in a train whistle town. Columbus, Georgia was (and still is) full of trains. My parents live directly beside the city’s big train yard. I really missed hearing the train whistles and banging together of cars when I moved to Oxford in 1998, as those sounds used to lull me to sleep at night.
You see, younger readers, back in the 1900s when I was a teenager, the television stations would turn off entirely after the 11 p.m. showing of the Jerry Springer Show. At midnight, the Georgia stations showed an America flag slowly waving in the wind over the waved-crashed brown sands of the Sea Island beaches. As an accompaniment to this, they played Ray Charles’s singing of “Georgia on My Mind.”
Simultaneously, the real-life midnight train whistle would blow from down at the train yards. It was quite a minute. And that, children, is when you knew to either sneak out or sneak back in to your bedroom window, depending on your evening plans.
The next train whistle to blow was the 2 a.m. whistle. That’s when you knew to put down your book (yes, we had to read books due to lack of anything else to do) and go to sleep. All this to say, if you want me to immediately fall asleep like I have narcolepsy, then blast a giant train whistle in my ear.
In honor of the new train whistle here’s a short Wagner Letter where patriarch D.R. Wagner tell his oldest son he better not get on that Christmas train. Harsh!
Water Valley, Miss
Dec 6th, 1886
My Dear Son,
I am awful sorry that I have to disappoint you but it will not be best for you to come home this winter. It is unnecessary for me to go into details. I suppose all you want to know is whether you can come or not, you will only have one day holiday and I do not want you to go anywhere. You offended your mother — she is quite sensitive as to her age. And, also myself by your remarks about our getting old and feeble. But we will forgive you if you say no more about it. Enclosed find a check for 15. Please pay Dr. Junter out of it and keep the balance. Your mother is talking of sending you a “Christmas” Box. Please do not be imprudent during Xmas. Remember I expect you to behave like a gentleman.
I think I will sell an interest in our business this winter.
I will write you more fully later.
Your father
D. R. Wagner
