anecdote 1

It rained all weekend, so it was difficult to find an anecdote with people in it while on my beat. So this one deals more with description and scene-setting, and might make a good segment in a story about the proposed Railroad Quiet Zones in Eugene.


It's a typically quiet evening at the Campbell House Inn. The large Victorian-style house on the hill sits regally in the rain, the large, multi-paned windows displaying gleaming dark wood furniture and Tiffany lamps. Their orange light spills out onto the well-manicured lawn and rose bushes with the season's last petals being tattered by large raindrops. The only noises here are the rush of the occasional car passing by and the nonstop chorus of gurgles coming from the gutters and storm drains that keep the neighborhood from becoming a lake during days of ceaseless rain like this.
Suddenly, a noise tears through the dusk that seems to blast away even the rain for a brief moment. It's a train - only a few hundred feet away on the railroad tracks below - sounding its horn for the neighborhood's two ungated intersections. Two short, screeching blasts, followed by a longer one that seems to stretch on for minutes. The volume is deafening, meant to warn pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists of the oncoming mass of steel and freight.