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This scene from the movie Stand By Me was very similar to one of my own experiences when I was seven years old. We were living as a family in Atlanta, and one day two of my brothers and a friend went for a hike. We happened upon a railroad trestle approximately the same size as the one in the movie--the only difference was that there were two rail lines.

No sooner had we made it to the middle of the span, we heard a train approaching. I remember we all started yelling, and then scrambling to the side opposite the train. I latched on to the structure with all the strength of a seven year old and looked down between the ties to the creek forty or fifty feet below. The shaking, the noise, and the sight of the wide-eyed engineer shaking a fist at us made an indelible impression on me.

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