I hear the Aberdeen-Rockfish chugging on by...

We have lived by the railroad tracks most of our lives.  There was a brief stint I lived on Ashemont Road, and even though I couldn't see the train, I could hear it.  Some nights on the back deck, I could hear it's whistle, or maybe it was the Amtrack in Southern Pines, not sure.  It is a lonely sound in the night, somehow mournful, but as a kid, I remember getting so excited when the first whistle came.  We kids would drop everything we were doing - sorry, ice cream, no time for you! - and rush to the glass panels at Grandma's front door to watch the cars roll by.  It was the biggest thing on wheels we had ever seen, a special sighting that filled us with awe and wonder twice a day, like clockwork.

My Grandfather was a farmer.  He owned most of the land on this end of the county and raised produce of every kind, including Congo watermelons.  They are the huge ones that only a grown man could carry, let alone slice.  The Rockfish-Aberdeen would stop, I'm told, and those watermelons would be loaded up and carried to who-knows-where, as I imagine the peaches from Poole's orchard were, too.

The peaches were sold under the Blue Diamond label.  I only know this because my father eventually bought the peach orchard, and I loved plundering in the pack shed.  I found the labels, packing crates, baskets, old equipment...and there was a hand pump beside the shed!  It still worked, and I thought it was the most awesome thing in the world to get a cool cup of water, right from the ground.

A little west of the orchard and the farm was the Sanitorium, built on the highest peak in the county.  The Aberdeen Rockfish rolled past that, too, and the passengers would cover their faces with handkerchiefs so as not to contract tuberculosis.  Back in the day, that peak was called Pestilence Hill.

It was a beautiful old building, more majestic than ominous. It was three stories high, the third floor with a balcony for the patients to sit in the sun to help "cure" their condition.  On the second floor, there was a chapel that gleamed with polished maplewood pews and pulpit.  The chapel was probably the most attractive feature.  The patient rooms were located on the first and second floors, not so austere as you might think.  And there was a fire tower. From there, and the balcony, you could see for miles, into the next county

I know this because after it was consigned to the dept. of corrections, I worked there.  I remember the old elevator that had iron gates around the doors - straight out of a horror movie! No, from another time.  Our office faced the road, and therefore the railroad tracks, too.  By then, the Aberdeen-Rockfish wasn't making daily trips anymore, but there were mornings when we would hear the whistle, and for just a minute, all work would cease as we watched that train seemingly struggle up the hill and on past us.

The landscape has changed, as all will with time.  The sanitorium is closed, but the grounds are still kept up by the state.  The peach orchard is gone, replanted in pines and the land leased out for the pinestraw.  The packshed burned to the ground about 20 years ago, I guess, but the platform still stands, and Grandfather's farmland is now littered with overgrowth and new homes.  The railroad tracks will be there forever, I suppose.  And though the A&R makes its trips only occasionally, it still lives.  I hope it always will.