A long string of railroad cars.

I was driving through Indiana thirty years ago when a long string of railroad cars, barely creaking along and scarred with black and red graffiti, delayed my journey on a dusty blacktop road as I waited for them to pass slowly by.
Roadside weeds embraced the ditches on either side of me near the tracks; they were filled with vibrant, pulsating insects that responded with crude joy to the heavy Indiana summer sun. Milkweed pods gaped at me. Thistles bristled. An empty, rusted can of Cento peeled tomatoes still retained its bright yellow and red label, which lifted me, elevated my spirits for a moment on my spiritless quest.
There were no other cars on the blacktop road -- it's like they knew about this wall of train cars that would block their path for an hour, and drove down some other road that had a viaduct or bridge or something. How could they know about it, and not me? I started to sweat lonely salt dew and drank a warm black bottle of Pepsi. I threw the empty glass bottle down into the ditch next to the empty Cento peeled tomatoes can. My momentary afflatus evaporated as the train cars groaned on their steel wheels. I could turn around and go find some way around the long string of train cars, but it might take many hours of driving on derelict blacktop roads that buckled like a walnut shell. And the queue of train cars might follow me, no matter how hard I tried to avoid them. Blocking my path, peeling time from me like it was my own skin in a torture chamber. So I decided to stay put and face my uninteresting fate. I turned off the engine. I sat. I puffed out my cheeks and let my lips flap like an idiot baby. At least I wouldn't starve; I had a full pack of Wrigley's Doublemint Gum.

Then another car pulled up on the other side of the long string of train cars. So . . . there was still life left on Planet Earth after all! I felt an insane longing to yell at the other driver, encouraging him not to give up and leave, but to stick it out with me -- we'd see this thing through together, eventually meet up, shake hands, maybe embrace, and make a date to meet back at this exact same spot a year later to celebrate our narrow escape from the pointless, dragging, wait. I could just make out the other driver through the heat haze, dust, and gaps as the train cars glacially rolled by. He got out to look up and down the long line of train cars, then got back in his car, backed up, and drove away. I was bereft once more.

I thought of boyhood summers in Minnesota, of cleaning and oiling my bicycle chain; sitting on the exposed front porch, covered in an old blanket, drenched and shivering as a thunderstorm passed overhead. Each summer day as a boy I was filled to the brim with something pagan and sensual -- now as a man I was stupidly waiting on an obscure road for empty railroad cars to pass me by, booming hollowly and laughing at me as they trailed away into the Indiana murk. 

The caboose appeared so suddenly that I barely registered the man on its rear platform, in bib overalls and smoking a pipe, who waved at me. At last I was free to go. There was nothing stopping me now. I started the car, drove over the bumpy tracks, and sped off past the ceaseless rows of dull green corn on either side of me. I would live out this day, not as a boy again, not as a carefree happy child of summer, but as a man who promised himself a chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes with gravy at a modest diner with neon signs buzzing in the twilight somewhere further down this strange yet now consoling blacktop road. I had survived a severe bout of introspection, and lived to tell the aimless tale . . .