I sit on my patio at four in the morning, looking up at the sky and watching the stars twinkle and listening to the crickets chirp away during this warm summer hour. It is still, as it often is in Ogden at this time. Often the winds breeze down Ogden Canyon to cool you off. The night owls are in bed; the early birds are not yet risen. It’s the buffer time between the two where most everybody rests and few seldom meet. Very few folks experience this hour in a waking state. I have always enjoyed this time of the night, or should I say morning, especially in summer, due to the fact that it is the quietest time of our twenty-four hour day. I awaken to it often and many times I stay up for it. Even as a child, I remember vividly waking to the silence and stillness of this hour. I would lay peacefully, listening to the darkness. I would speak to it as I do now. It seems to speak back. The calmness is deafening. Then suddenly out of nowhere I hear the sound of a train whistle at a distance as it echoes and reverberates off the mountain range, the great protectors and guardians of the valley. As I sit in this silence now the train whistle beckons the arrival of distant guests or goods. I remember the comforting and safe feelings I would enjoy at these moments knowing my parents were in the next room soundly asleep, as were my brother and sisters. I knew I had several more hours to rest in this enjoyment until I had to get up and get ready for school and begin the hustle bustle of the day. Here we are decades later and that same comforting feeling comes over me and beckons me again simply by a whistle and a still night. It makes me wonder, do things really change? Some things do and some things do not it seems. I've been thinking a lot about that subject lately on a personal and community level. Is change good or bad? And how do we determine the difference? Many fear it and others embrace it. Our community has gone through so many changes in the past half-century and many in the last decade or two as time seems to accelerate even though in Ogden time seems to stand still sometimes. Some changes have been good and others not as time has shown Yet many things have stayed the same, such as the whistle of a distant train. Now that we begin our town’s fourth half-century I reflect on what each meant and what each decade has brought, or taken. I hope we learn from our past mistakes; those of our forefathers before us. Perhaps we could also learn from their accomplishments. With this knowledge we may avoid any mistakes for those that follow us. The culmination is now upon us at this juncture in the road of this renaissance and revitalization. It has been talked about for many years, perhaps decades, but never before has our city seen so many different construction projects in progress and new projects planned at the same time as now. And "now" is all that counts, ultimately. Hence our magazine's slogan: “Where the Past Meets the Present and the Future is Now.” It all seems to come together in one point of time, yet holds only at that moment of THE NOW. Not since the boom of the railroad industry at the turn of the century has Ogden had so much explosion of growth everywhere. Over one hundred years ago we were graciously brought into our history, thankfully to the historic moment in time, the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point. We indeed came alive and then became the Junction City of the West as buildings, homes and the entire community were built at a rapid rate in this new found prosperity. Remnants of the boom still linger in town, particularly in the downtown district and 25th Street and the many older homes still standing throughout central Ogden. That period in history prevails even though that industry has all but left us. Many of her monuments to a prosperous and industrial time still remain, luckily. I am reminded of this time tonight as I listen to the beckoning sound of silence of the night watchman. The sound that says someone is watching over you. Someone is driving this town forward as you rest. It is a safe feeling, one that is not easily described. A feeling of reassurance rather then intrusion. This is our own unique bell of progress and consistency even amidst all the changes. Living on the Pacific Ocean for many years I would be reminded of the same experience, as the foghorns would bellow in the night. I always reflected on my hometown of Ogden and the whistle in the night. It has always said someone is watching over you and paying attention to the town, our own village. In many years past we would wait for the sound of the night watchman shouting out to the village uttering, "All is well! All is well!” That is what I hear now when the sound of the night calls out to me, to all of us. I even forget the troubles of the day. Someone IS watching out for us and over us and it is a safe, peaceful and exciting crux at this moment of time in our own history. In our fair city, even amidst what may seem to some as the opposite, I hear the whistle again. It whispers, "All is well, all is well."
