Summer Sounds of Childhood
When I visit my childhood
home, the first thing I notice is the quietness. It’s an old neighborhood now.
All of the kids grew up and moved away. When I was a child, the valley was
filled with noise. Children playing, shouting, fighting, calling across the
way. Cracks of baseball bats hitting balls, the thump, thump of the basket ball
pounding on the neighbor’s driveway. The clinks of horseshoes on the metal
posts. Yells of “Through, through, hit
the wicket!” when we played croquet. “Ready or not here I come,” when we played
hide and seek. Parents used what my aunt called the bellering system. No cell
phones back then. They just stood on their porches and yelled when it was time for
their kids to come in, except for our neighbor’s dad who had a distinctive
whistle that brought his children home. In the summer time, with all of the big
yards, there was always a mower running. And on summer nights Bob Prince’s
distinctive voice rang out. Sounds of the Beatles, the Beachboys, and Simon and
Garfunkel added to the neighborhood noise. But now even the mower sounds are
muffled with the growth of the big trees that make the yards look small.
A noisy past world
Many years have come and
gone
Same place, now quiet
