Do it yourself

It has occurred to me that many if not most of the participants on these lists are too young to have known the joys of "The Good Old Days." I would like to take a moment and enumerate a few of the sounds and smells that are held in hidden and oft visited crevasses of the minds of some of us older folk. I had the privilege of having been born in a Santa Fe railroad company house that sat right next to the track in a very small Eastern Kansas town of the mid to late 30's. Steam engines were still common and memories of the eerie sounds of an engines whistle in the dead of night still comfort me to this day. Each train that passed through, and there were many, left in its wake the sweet acrid odor of the coal that fed the hungry flame in the belly of the beast. Our house was surrounded by wooden plank sidewalks that did funny things to the drops of rain that would fall outside my bedroom window during a spring nights down pour, they didn't pitter patter but landed with an audible splat. For you see, we did not have air conditioning in those days and so we heard and filed away for future use the memories of the sounds and smells of a spring rain. Flashing lightening and rolling thunder did not fill our hearts with the fears of today that the television, computer or any one of a dozen other modern necessities would be cremated by a sudden strike. Instead, these were the instruments of a supernatural orchestra that lulled us into ever deeper slumber, for even though the windows were closed against the rain, there were no storm windows to completely muffle outside sounds. Spring lawns, such as they were, a blaze with all manner of wild flowers being given the full attention of bees and insects, for there were no pesticides or herbicides to kill bugs and weeds. Lawns were kept trimmed either by the pushing of a rusty reel type mower or the hungry beaks of a few of the family ducks and chickens. Yes, my children, people in town had chickens and since they fed on the bugs from the lawn and disposed of the garbage, eggs were nearly free during the spring and summer months. It was not uncommon in small towns to find a few cows and horses kept in back yard sheds as well. I can see already the scrunched up noses of a few, but it is only the smells that one is unaccustomed to that are found to be offensive. This reminds me of one of the writings of Pearl Buck when she tells of going to a theater in the U.S. after having lived in China for so many years, and becoming physically ill from the body odors of those around her because they had been accustomed to eating copious amounts of meat, a rarity in China. She said, that after a few months of her return to a diet that contained meat the odors were no longer noticed. We could tell who had pulled into the drive by the sound of their car and the way the door slammed, now you can hardly hear a car run, and if you could they'd make you have it repaired. The gurgle-chug of the Model T was not a sound heard only in a parade but the song of main street on Saturday night. Oh yes, those wonderful Saturday nights when all the farm wives would put on their best "feed sack print" dress and having applied a little face powder, a dash or rouge and a liberal splash of some dime store toilet water perfume stand around in clumps exchanging the joys and trials of the previous week. To a small boy or girl this was a real night out on the town, and just maybe a penny sack of candy or a nickel ice cream cone. The meat market, grocery, dry goods, hardware, drug, barbershop and dime stores each had their own identifying sounds and smells, but these will have to wail for another evening. To be Continued: Dale in the Flat Lands