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SOUNDS OF THE PAST
By Bill
Grosboll
November
10,
2007
The
other evening as I was watching television, I noticed a
very loud drone coming from outside, a drone that I
typically didn’t hear. I went to the slider and opened
it and then realized it was a propeller-driven plane at
the airport. I listened to it for quite a spell and
realized that the plane was leaving the airport which is
approximately two miles distant. After the plane’s
sound diminished, I noticed a ‘roar’ that was steady and
never changing. This I reckoned was traffic on the
freeway, which is also about the same distance away as
the airport. I decided to check out the humidity on the
weather channel and sure enough, it was 100 percent
(very unusual for this area). Sound travels so much
better in high humidity that I was able to hear things
not normally possible. This got me thinking about those
quiet mornings on the farm, right at sun rise, when the
humidity was high.
The strongest memory, and most missed, is
the clanking of the metal milk cans. Almost every farm
family, when I was a kid, had a milk cow or two, just to
have fresh milk for daily use. Some of the farmers had
enough milk cows that a daily milk truck made the rounds
and picked up the extra milk that these farmers would
sell off. As these cans were being handled, they made a
very distinct sound, not too pleasant but it would sure
nice to hear those cans now. The sound from those cans
could be heard a couple miles away on those quiet
mornings, as well as any conversations the neighbors
were having. They would be talking in their normal tone
of voice but they could be heard almost as well as if
they were just a hundred feet away. Of course I was too
young to really care about what they were saying, so I
didn’t learn any hot gossip! It was on those mornings
that I could hear all the neighbors' dogs barking, cows
mooing, steers bawling, and pigs oinking (mostly
grunting). For you city folks, steers are male bovines
that have had a not too pleasant of an operation to make
them unable to reproduce, therefore they make a
different sound that a cow, which is called bawling. I
guess I would bawl too if that were done to me. Very
seldom was a horse ever heard, simply because the first
thing the farmers did with the advent of the automobile
and tractors, was get rid of the horses as soon as
possible. They were expensive and time consuming to
keep on the place.
There was an unlimited amount of song
birds to listen to, many more than today. I liked
listening to their various songs, which they began
singing as soon as the sun came up, more so than any
other time of day. Then there were the sparrows,
starlings, and those darned chickens that have no songs,
just making a lot of ugly noise. The bird song that
amazed me most was the cooing of the doves. The doves
always cooed until they sensed that rain was in the
forecast, at which time they changed their song to a
very distinct song that was completely different.
Whenever this song was heard it was called the call of
the ‘rain crows’ but actually it was the doves. I must
admit, they were pretty good at forecasting rain and
very seldom did they miss. The farmers paid attention
to them because of this accuracy.
In the evening, about sundown, the birds
hushed up and the insects took over. It was great to
sit outside and listen to the crickets and locusts.
Locusts go through cycles, when they are most numerous,
about seven years, I believe. During the period when
they were at their peak, it was one noisy place for a
couple hours after dark. Noisy at the time but I miss
that noise now. We also had a creek not too far from
the house and each evening we would hear the frogs
croaking, another sound I miss. While I’m discussing
evenings, I would like to comment about something other
than sound and that being the extremely dark and clear
skies of my childhood. As a child growing up in the
forties and fifties, there was not nearly the light
pollution we have today. Once in a while a neighbor
would have a pole light they left burning all night but
usually the light was turned on only when needed. In
the summer months when it was nice to be outside at
night, the corn had grown to such a height that it
blocked all the light coming from the various neighbor’s
houses. Of course there were very few cars in the
country so we didn’t have their noise or head lights
being a bother. On a clear night, thousands, maybe
millions, of stars could be seen, bright and dim. The
stars making up the Milky Way were so abundant that the
Milky Way appeared as a faint white cloud in the sky.
No matter where you live today, that is a view the
children of today will never have, merely by stepping
outside their door. What a loss for them! I drive out
to the country once in a while to see the stars but even
out here where we don’t have the population density of
people as back in the Midwest, I am unable to see the
heavens above as I did when I was a child because of all
the light pollution. I do miss the beauty of the stars!
Getting back to sounds of the country,
all those sounds of my childhood have been replaced by
the roar of traffic on nearby highways or other noises
of modern conveniences. I just thought of another sound
that was just beginning to make it presence known and
that was the modern jet. Up to the Korean War, in the
early fifties, all aircraft were propeller-driven but
then, once in a great while, a jet plane could be
heard. Dad and I would stop what we were doing and
watch it fly overhead, amazed at it’s speed. It took
some time to learn to look far ahead of the sound to see
the plane, due to it’s speed. These aircraft were
entirely new to we farm boys! Very seldom did we see
contrails from the airplanes passing overhead, not at
all like we see today. Also, as the planes got faster,
it was not unusual to hear the sonic boom they made as
they flew faster than the speed of sound. There were no
restrictions at that time which limited their speed and
not until people starting complaining about the ‘boom’
were restrictions imposed on the aircraft as too how
fast they could travel. I always like to hear the
‘boom’ since it meant that the pilot was really getting
with the program. As a teenager I loved speed, as
anyone will attest, who had the misfortune of riding
with me after I got my drivers license. What that has
to do with sound, I don’t know. Just thought I would
throw it in! Anyway, enjoy those pleasant sounds that
you can still hear. It’s a changing world and they may
not be there to enjoy much longer. I’m glad that I had
the opportunity.
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