TWA TRAVEL ALARM CLOCK: the time is now...

TWA TRAVEL ALARM CLOCK: the time is now...
Originally uploaded by roberthuffstutter

HOW DOES THIS ALARM CLOCK DEFINE NOISE POLLUTION AND END UP AS AN ESSAY ABOUT BOYS HOPPING FREIGHT TRAINS?

I grew up three houses away from three railroad tracks. Steam engines ran until the early 50s. There was always noise, but us boys loved to wave at the passengers when we were out on our bikes. The Missouri Pacific, Route of the Eagles maintained two of the tracks; the other track was a freight track for the Kansas City Southern that hauled coal and oil back and forth to the Hawthorne Electrical Plant and the Standard Oil Refinery Plant in Sugar Creek, Missouri. The oil trains were so slow we could hop on them and ride to the Missouri River.
_____________________________________________________
TWA TRAVEL ALARM CLOCK: the time is now...
Powered by single Rolls Royce Engine. I hope this is not environmentally incorrect. My purpose for posting this is in response to a program directed at youth about noise pollution in and around the shipping lanes of America. Now, admittedly, noise does pollute for the few moments it lasts, but is it a reason to halt shipping in order to make the whales and dolphins more environmentally comfy. This is all we need to totally smash the future of this nation is a noise ban on shipping. Perhaps we should go back to the sailing ship, the fast clippers. That would be cool and I will be all for it if, and I say IF we can get China, Japan, Russia and all of the other major shippers to begin using sailing ships only. Oh, and I forgot, the Middle Eastern nations will have to revert to sailing ships too...if that is okay?

Uploaded by roberthuffstutter on 22 Jan 11, 9.01AM PST.
_____________________________________________________
WAY BACK IN THE 1950S, THERE WAS A BUNCH OF US BOYS WHO LIVED ON A STREET IN WHAT WAS CALLED THE "INNER-CITY" AREA OF KANSAS CITY AND INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI

We were a wild bunch, an unruly bunch, not a gang in the sense of gangs in today's world, but we did have weapons. I won't get into that here, but we were armed, and we had a hide-out, in fact, several.

We were smiling youths on bikes just riding around the neighborhood having fun. There was a dump nearby. Dumps are always additions to boys' fun and games. We found lots of stuff, the better to furnish our hideouts. One of the hideouts was a large cave behind one of the boy's homes that backed into a large wooded area. Oh, there were lots of woods around where we lived.

There were cliffs, hollows, just about every kind of geographical oddity there is, even old storage wells filled with polluted water mixed with oil run off near the railroad tracks. One boy tried swimming, but was frightened by a water-mocasin.

We had a name--we were called the "Cave Dwellers." Read more about our adventures in the next installment, whenever it happens to pop up here. It will most likely be about our search for the James Gangs hidden booty. Or about our hopping frieght.