Home

This is where I grew up.

What is it about the song "Home" from Phillip Phillips that has advertisers clamoring to use it in their commercials?  It's quite simple, really.  Next to the word family, there is no other word like home that elicits such an immediate, passionate, and emotional response.  It's an attachment that cannot be explained; it's human nature.  Maybe it’s the house you were born or perhaps the house where you lived your formidable teen years, but we all have that one special place that we call home.  For me that place is not a house, but rather a stretch of railroad tracks near the small Indiana subdivision where I was raised.  From the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, I spent the bulk of my adolescence on this former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline.  The line once saw dozens of diesels hauling coal, auto parts, and even passengers, but by the late-80s was a shell of its former self.  During the tracks twilight years, I was out watching 70 year-old men switch train cars for the local Ford plant or else I was making my patented late-night walk down the tracks with my friend John.  Despite the passing years, my memories of home are fond and still vivid.  Business on the old tracks dried up in the late-90s and nature soon took over the route.  Where two sets of shiny rails once proudly stood, weeds and trees now rule the right of way.  I flinched and (admittedly) gasped when I learned that the end of the line for these idle tracks is near.  Soon the rusted rails and rotting ties will be torn up and hauled away.  While this news tugs at my heart, I am pleased to learn that a bike path might soon replace the tracks.  One day, I’ll be able to go home again.