The sounds of my hometown have changed so much over the years. When we first moved to Helena, Alabama, it was just an up-and-coming town in Shelby County that still had that southern small town feel. Built around two bustling train depots, where were tracks everywhere. You literally cannot leave Helena without crossing railroad tracks.
The whistles of the trains were prominent when I was younger. We could hear them inside out house with the windows shut and the trains a couple of miles away. There wasn’t much to drown it out then, only the cacophony of children shrieking as they played outside. If you passed only two cars on the road, that was called “rush hour,” so there was no problem there. While there are churches, there are no church bells. And sirens rarely break through the continued silence, though there are fire stations and police stations (well, actually, city hall doubled as the police station where our eight cops spent their time).
It was growing as I grew, though maybe I was growing a little faster. Then an article came out in Forbes magazine in 2007 or 2008 that named Helena, Alabama one of the best places to live in the United States. Thanks, Forbes. Now there are a ton of people here, but not enough to do. It’s a weird limbo between metropolitan city and country, that place called suburbia. I personally can’t stand it. There are still trains, but there are also sirens and traffic and honking horns and moving vans and large semis delivering goods.
Great details, Jennie - and the description of "progress" and change coming to a little town like Helena.
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