I Sleep Well Here at Lance Road

The house was the color of Southeastern Florida beach sand. That shade of sand was darker than oatmeal and lighter than pine tree bark. Leading up to the front door was a four-car wide driveway, and a path through the bright green grass was made by the clicking of flip flops on the way to the simple, yet lightly faded brown, front door. The house was strong, and nicknamed “Lance Road” because of it’s likeness to the seven-time winner of the Tour De France, U.S.A. cyclist Lance Armstrong. I slept well there at Lance Road.
About once a month I heard the late night dull pitch of a siren and the Florida East Coast Railroad train passing through on it’s way from Jacksonville to Miami, or vice versa. I never really knew what the siren was for, maybe the night black railroad bridge with lined with wooden railroad ties and steel track. Or maybe that siren was for a neighborhood water pump out station filled to capacity because of the drenching rains that blanketed the area during the start of this year’s rainy season. I hadn’t had a chance to discover what that siren really was. The sound came late… Sometime like after two or three a.m. 99 percent of the time, after 4 a.m. was when I slept well there at Lance Road.