Reason 1: As my dad lay dying on his death bed, his last words to me were, ‘The money, it’s buried under the …” but at that moment a train passed and blew his whistle. Unfortunately at that same moment my dad also passed and the money remains buried under the … I have not liked trains whistling since that day.

Reason 2: Rumor has it that a certain UP engineer is having a messy breakup with his significant other who happens to still live in Baker and taking revenge to new levels holds the horn on. Well thanks, Casey Jones, there’s others who live here too.

Reason 3: According to the Geneva Convention, sleep deprivation is a war crime. That means every night in Baker UP carries out 11 to 14 war crimes.

Reason 4: Maybe those people who keep sending their junk mail about getting a hearing aid would cease and desist.

Union Pacific claims it would be too expensive to extend the crossing bars in lieu of removing warning whistles rendering any audible warning system useless because certain people race the barriers anyway. Removing the train’s horns isn’t going to change anything. Without the horn honks, but with additional length on the bars making it harder to swerve around we could still eliminate many of the mufflerless trucks in town — another noise problem. These people have nothing better do than to play chicken with RR bars. Do we really want to protect these people?

Let the whistles and horns and bells sound all they want but in exchange, bring back Amtrak so we can at least get out of town and take a break from all the noise.

There’s plenty of other reasons too that we need to get rid of this noise. La Grande is whistle-free; why can’t we be? Then again, they got the college; we got the prison.

Whit Deschner

Baker City