YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and as I promised both of you I am writing about another thing that scares me at Halloween time. It is my memory of a trip to see the Gurdon Light.
I have had more than one scary experience with that phenomenon.
Three or four, to be exact.
The first was the best (or worst). It was this time of year. Our John Balch and I were in Gurdon for the newspaper to cover the Gurdon-Mineral Springs football game.
It was kind of a wet evening, but it wasn’t exactly raining. The game was over and we decided we had enough time to dash out to the railroad tracks and try to see the Gurdon Light. We were skeptical that the thing existed.
The tracks cross a remote highway north of town. That’s where we parked. We could go north on the tracks, or we could go south. We decided to go north, and naturally it was the wrong way. We reversed course after we had huffed-and-puffed about a half mile.
If you’ve ever walked on railroad tracks then you would know that it is muy difficult. Especially at night when it’s not exactly raining.
We crossed back over the highway and continued south past an eerie old abandoned graveyard, and over three railroad trestles that spanned deep ditches.
Finally we figgered we had gone far enough. Even then I was fat and lazy. John was fit and could have walked all night except …… we saw the Light.
It seemed to be a ways down the tracks. A very bright white light, and it seemed to swing from side-to-side just like the legendary lantern swung by a railroad man who was looking for his head that was severed in an accident.
We were mesmerized by the intense light. The color reminded me of an old carbide camping lantern.
Then John said “Hey, that thing seems to be coming toward us.”
I agreed.
John said: “If it keeps coming, I am going to push you down, Old Man, and I’ll run back to the highway where it’s safe. Quick, give me the keys to your truck.”
You really wouldn’t run off and leave me, would you? I asked.
John said: “Doggone right, and I can outrun you.”
Whatever it was, it finally stopped advancing on us.
We woulda stayed longer, but the brave one of our twosome said he had to get back for some reason that escapes my memory right now.
To this day we both can honestly tell questioners that we really, really did see something on those tracks on a wet night.
Subsequently, I made other trips down those tracks.
Twice with daughter Julie and our town’s police chief, the late Larry Yates, and another time with my daughter only.
With the police chief we saw only hundreds of tiny twinkling blue lights on the creek bank under the trestle.
I was glad to know that the chief was ‘packing.’
On one of the trips only with Julie, we didn’t see anything, but there was something in the bushes that made the awfulest, scariest sounds we’ve ever heard (and I have personally heard Texas fans at a football game at Austin). I considered pushing Julie down and outrunning her back to the truck.
There was a lot of interest in the Gurdon Light in those years, and lots of people from here hiked down those tracks in hopes of having a scary sighting of their own to brag about.
Then one group from here said they were robbed by another group on the tracks, and that pretty well put an end to expeditions by curious visitors from Howard County.
At about the same time period the Red River Astronomy Club had a meeting and hamburger cookout for telescopers in a pasture outside of Nashville. They invited the chairman of the physics department at Henderson State University to speak. His advertised topic was the Gurdon Light.
I crashed the meeting in order to mooch a free burger and to hear the perfesser. He gave a very interesting talk, and said that every year he sent his freshman students in small groups down those tracks to experience the Gurdon Light.
Some groups saw it, some didn’t.
In an effort to explain the Light, the perfesser said that there were several ways nature creates light.
I can’t remember all of them now. In fact, I can’t remember any of them.
But I DO remember how skeert I was when John said he’d push me down and leave me to my fate with whatever it was waving that lantern.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening e-mail: “Exercise helps you with decision-making. It’s true. I went for a run this morning and decided I’m never going again.”
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WORD GAMES. The twins: Five and Dime. They were the precursor to Walmart. Does anyone else remember Scotts, or TG&Y, or O’Hara & Majors?
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HE SAID: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” Mark Twain, humorist and philosopher
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SHE SAID: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Eleanor Roosevelt, longest-serving First Lady of the US
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
