Why I hate negotiating around this town

All residents of Corsicana are ready for 7th Avenue to be finished. It's the main road through town on which 75% of the restaurants in town are on and it's a pain when all lanes are open.

People on the north side of town are also ready for Forest Lane to be open. It's been one way for months, and it's the wrong way in my opinion. It makes it very difficult - a big pain - to get over to my parents and because I don't want to mess with it, I just don't go over to their house.

Today, once I finally got out of their neighborhood, I had an experience with one of the other pains of this town. The trains. There are three different sets of tracks that go through town, and some turn and change direction so you can avoid a train once, drive through town and get caught by it elsewhere.

When I went to school out at Mildred in high school, if I went down Beaton, instead of out Hardy Avenue, I would have to sit through the train trying to get out of town, and then wait on the same train when I got almost to the school. That was before they built the bridge over the tracks.

That particular track is the one that runs through "my backyard". I live smack on the tracks that run through the residential area of town.

If all the streets between my parents' house and my house are open and going both ways, it would take me 3 minutes tops to get there or back to my house. Today, it took me 25.


The street that is the easiest way to get back home from my parents' was closed again since they are getting closer to having that part paved. I had to take the shortest long way to one-way street to get home. I get around the curve, and there is a train stopped at Dobbins. People are turning around in front of me. And turning around. Finally, after a few minutes, I decide to turn around. I'm debating whether I should try to go around to the crossing closest to my house, or the one further down that might be clear. 


I decide to go for the one closest to my house at Beaton. I cut through a neighborhood, get onto Beaton and discover I should have turned around sooner because as I approach the crossing, and a train from the other direction starts coming through and it too stops. 


Realize this: If it weren't for the train, i could see the back of my house from this crossing. 


I turn around again, as I pull up a little bit to turn around, I can see cars are getting through the next crossing at Navarro/Commerce. The stopped train is so close though, I am surprised arms aren't down. 


Then, I miss the gravel road cut off that goes through the mini warehouses that would have saved time from going long way. I go all the way up to 1st Avenue, come back up Beaton the other way behind a truck that seems to be taking it's sweet time since he sees he has to wait for a train. 

Now that the train is moving again, I need the truck out of my way so that I can turn left at once of Corsicana's top 3 squirreliest intersections (the 13th/Beaton split) so that I can get onto Northwood before the train passes, arms go up, and I never get across when all the cars start going. 

Thankfully I get through, but I don't think the arms went up because once that train got past (it wasn't very long), the first train that was stopped starts back up. I can see this as I pull up to my house to park. And it takes forever to go by because I can hear it and see it through one of my windows. 

If I weren't ready for my Sunday nap before, I was by the time I got home 25 minutes after I left. 

I know everyone in this town has had one of these ridiculous train adventures. This blog is mainly for them because they understand this exact frustration. 

Random fact of the day to close the blog tonight. On the track that runs parallel to Northwood, most all of the trains on the track travel from the Northwest to the Southeast. Only like once a day do the trains go in the opposite direction. And a lot of trains come through a day. In 9 years, I've never counted how many a day. And yes, I sleep thru most all of them except in the winter when they seem even louder.


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