Did anyone else hear the gun shots?

Gunshot
Originally uploaded by h.andras_xms

Despite popular belief, it doesn't happen very often that I hear gun shots in Lincoln Park, Pomona. But last night at 10:30 p.m., I very clearly heard three gun shots in rapid succession. They sounded closeby, as if they were a few doors to my east, almost as if they were coming from within the park. A neighbor mentioned to me the other day that she had heard gun shots a few days ago, coming from that same direction. She said it reminded her of the "old days."

What struck me about the gun shots was how silent everything was both before and after I heard them. There was not the usual helicopter flying past Lincoln Park on it's way to wherever it feels the need to go each and every other night but this one. The helicopter usually starts in about 9:30 or 10 p.m., but not last night.

Even now as I type at almost 2 a.m., Pomona is silent, no sirens, no cars passing by, no nothing. Even the trains are oddly silent tonight.

Oh wait, I hear the trains now. One of my favorite things about living in Pomona is the night time train horns that drift into the bedroom each night. I'm bummed that according to this article, the trains will be silenced within the next few weeks. Someone got this whole thing mixed up; it should be the obnoxious police helicopters that are silenced, not the whistling train horns. Oh hey, I hear a helicopter now in the distance, and the train horns continue to blow...for now. I think it finally sounds enough like Pomona that I can go to sleep. But I'm not at all sure what I'm going to do without those train whistles to get me to sleep in the future. END