I just want to add the train horn to my list. Thank you for that. It is so important to me. Although m earliest years were in Texas, my father took a medical job in way faraway Portland, Oregon and we moved away from all our extended family. This was quite hard on me. I am the baby of the family and while I certainly missed my cousins, most of them and definitely my much older brother didn't really have much use for me.

Because of this dynamic, the people I really missed most were my grandparents. They lived on a cattle ranch in Texas. A busy rail line ran through their town less that a quarter mile from their home and I remember hearing that train, especially at night, when we would visit them--which wasn't very often, sadly, because the distance between our new city and their place in Texas was the equivalent of going from Rejkjavik to Moscow. No Sunday dinners at grandma's, that was for sure.

Now, purely by coincidence, I live about three hundred yards from another busy rail line and when those trains come through and blow their horns, I feel like I am at home in Texas again. With all my people. It feels, just for a moment, like I am at my forever home, with my grandparents and cousins and everybody. It is very comforting. I wish they had one of those sound maker machines with train horns on them-- I would play it 24/7.