Posted on 07/24/2014 7:52:50 PM PDT by Kaslin
I long for the sounds of summer I knew as a kid.
In the '60s and '70s, you see, most of our neighbors kept their windows open day and night, allowing the outside sounds to come in and the inside sounds to go out.
I woke every morning to the birds chirping outside my window screen, a dewy chill in the air. I'd smell my father's pipe, which he smoked while he read the paper downstairs. I'd go down to greet him. Sometimes he'd make scrambled eggs and toast covered with butter, and we'd eat while the birds kept on singing.
The evening sounds were equally powerful: a dog barking; a motorcycle downshifting on some faraway hill; people out on their porches listening to the Pirates play on the radio; a baby crying; a couple talking; children laughing; a window fan humming.
Sounds carry far in the summer air. One family on the hill - they had three adult kids still living at home - entertained the whole neighborhood with their cussing and bickering:
"You're an idiot!" one would shout.
"No, you're an idiot!" said another.
"Shut up the both of youse!" the old man would yell. He told our next-door neighbor once he couldn't understand why his kids were so rude to each other, the lousy idiots.
The sounds I miss the most, though, were the shouts and chants and bells that families relied on to call their kids home for supper.
In those days, kids didn't participate in one adult-run activity after another. We didn't sit inside air-conditioned homes playing video games. No, we were out in the hills roaming and exploring and creating all day long.
We collected scrap wood and built shacks. We damned up the creek and caught minnows and crayfish. One summer, we built a motorized go-cart with some scrap items from a junked riding mower and a couple of two-by-fours. It was one of the great engineering feats in my neighborhood's history.
Occasionally, we'd fib to our mothers and ride our bikes 20 miles farther than we said we would. Or we'd pluck some baby pears off a tree by Horning road and whip them at cars. Every now and then, a car would screech to a stop, and we'd sprint through a creek aqueduct that ran 200 feet beneath the neighborhood.
There was only one major rule a kid had to abide by: you'd better be home in time for supper.
Every kid had a unique sound to call him home. My father went with a deep, booming, "Tom, dinner! Tom, dinner!" I could hear him a mile away or more.
When moms did the calling, they always used full names. They always sang, too, as my Aunt Jane did: "Miiiiiikkkeeelllll, Keeeeevvvviiiiiinnnnn, suuuuuppppppeeerrrr!"
The Givens boys, up on the hill across the railroad tracks, were called in by a large bell. The clanging sounded off at 6 every night, giving us the sense that a river boat was making its way up the Mississippi or a chow wagon was calling in the cow hands for some grub.
One family used a riot horn. The piercing "hrmmpppphhhhhh!" could be heard for miles. There was no way that kid, attempting to explain why he was late for supper, could claim he didn't hear it.
These mystical summer sounds have been gone a long time now. How wonderful it would be to bring them back.
At least one month every summer, why don't we cease every structured activity for our children, cancel every tournament, and end every adult-run event.
Let's turn off the television and computer. Let's shut down the air conditioner and un-shutter the windows and doors.
Let's allow our kids to go out into the hills to roam and play and discover all day long. That will require us to call them home at dinner.
And our shouts and chants and bells will breathe some much needed music into the sweet summer air.
And a clip of Dan Rather with his Texas accent to boot.
“... goodness, decency, the simple things, its all disappearing. When did America catch the sickness it has. “
Late 60’s. It consolidated in the 70’s.
Drugs had a lot to do with it. LSD and marijuana. Methamphetamine and cocaine didn’t help either.
And without this freedom to roam and wander in kids, the spirit of independence and innovation, ingenuity and know-how is not inculcated.
And that spirit is what is needed for conservatism to flourish.
Lightning bugs.
Same here. Except I do carry a grudge against that robin who starts up at 430 or 5. I need another half hour or so before I get up. If I ever draw a bead on him..... I guess I’d let him be after all. Love summer, but look forward to fall.
I am about to move back to the US after 4 years in India. Here I cannot allow my daughter to play outside not only because of the danger from other people (rapes of kids are alarmingly high here; I blame the inability of ordinary citizens to own guns), but also the presence of dangerously-poisonous animals and the sheer dirtiness of the outside (trash, animal and human feces and their accompanying parasites, pollution).
So I will be selling my soul so I can afford a property in a semi-rural area with at least 2 acres of land, so she has room to run around, explore, play, find bugs under rocks, climb trees etc. and yet still be “on my property” where I can (in theory, at least) still see her. That way she gets “outdoor time”, and I can thwart any nosy busybodies who might snoop around trying to accuse me of not supervising my child.
Bizarre, that was my youth and my neighborhood, Hurricane Carla, the Princess hamburger drive-in and Telephone road, the beer ice houses, the Watermelon ice houses, Hempstead movie Drive-in.
Although he is younger than me, Ted Cruz grew up in the same neighborhood.
I had never heard of the song, thanks.
Actually my memory is rusty, although I spent a lot of time on Telephone road and lived on it or close to it later, it is farther from my (and Ted Cruz’s) Spring Branch, than I recall, I think I was confusing it with Hempstead highway and the Princess closer to me.
Looking at modern maps isn’t helping me much though, I need to talk to one of my Houston friends to recall.
Good essay. I’d been thinking of that very thing recently.
+1
I didn't realize that Telephone Road was a real place. I thought it was just a song title.
Other lost sounds - Kid’s sing-song games:
London Bridge...
Ring around the rosie....
One-potato, two potato....
Eeny meeny miney mo....
Engine engine number nine....
Your mother and my mother were hanging out clothes.....
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack...
Teddy bear, teddy bear....
“Oh come on playmate
Come out and play with me.....”
The “one man, one vote” Supreme Court decisions of the 1960’s led to more urban influence, and it’s been downhill ever since.
“Nice thoughts of a forgotten time; however, they don’t put away the perverts or the criminals anymore...”
They didn’t put them away then either. This guy is telling us the days of Charles Manson, John Gacy, Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, and the The Hillside Stranglers was a pristine time.
Jimmy Carter was president. Jerry Brown and Rose Bird were freeing criminals as fast as they were arrested, and I couldn’t let my wife and baby daughter go to the market at night without me. I love history revisionists.
Don’t forget the screen door slamming, the electric fans, the acoustic lawn mowers, and down the shore, the constant hammering as new houses were going up, the outboard motors, the gulls, the nearby baseball game . . .
I miss the sounds too. I live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and even here the number of birds has declined drastically. I can walk for 3 blocks without seeing or hearing a bird. And frogs have disappeared completely. Some call that “progress.”
And I’m lucky if I see 10 butterflys in an entire summer. Bumblebees are virtually gone, too.
By age 10 I was living in a rural community. Same thing only better. At age 13 I was camping out alone in the summer on the lake with boat, motor, rifle and dog. Dad checked on me at least every other day brought ice food etc.. No phone. Nearest one was a 20 minute boat ride with an old 7.5 early 50's era 7.5 hp Evinrude.
In the mid 1970's changes started happening. Places I would go to at night in downtown Knoxville like to the theatres to see a movie when riding to town with my dad on his way to work were no longer safe for a kid and my dad who worked evening shift for Ma Bell started carrying. In 1976 I left for Basic and my dad drove my old 61 Chevy to work one night. Some one stole it LOL. It was parked right underneath I-40.
But yes I do remember a safer nation and a time when certain behavior wasn't tolerated by society nor our judicial system. We did have one major scare I can remember a killer on the loose. It was about 1960 or 61 and a man escaped from a county courthouse and was involved in a shootout there and later killed two more men on the lamb. That was his second escape his first was from a penal farm ran by a sadist. After the guy was killed in a shootout the area returned to normal.
Yes - I was writing about MY childhood, waaaay before Carter.
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