A TV weather
person reported that this was going to be a really big year for Cicadas that
have been “sleeping” for 17 years or so and that we would hear their “songs”
which is the unique sound they make calling other Cicadas for a date...And then
I thought about crickets and the music of my summer nights…
…I hear nothing, not even rain now going to bed in my air
conditioned, soundproof apartment high above the street that was once a grove
of hundreds of orange trees. In the summers when I was a kid all the
bedroom windows in our cottage were open but the breezes did little to cool
me. However, they did carry the chirp of countless crickets in the pines
surrounding our house. I can still hear their rhythmic love songs in my
imagination as I would lie awake trying to figure if there was a pattern to
their calls but I never found one. It would take several years later in
high school biology class to learn their purpose in nature. My home was
about 2 miles from our town and half a mile from the state highway. We
had only a few neighbors but plenty of crickets “in the woods” as grandmother
Ethel would call our backyard.
And there were other sounds that drifted into the darkness of my
room. Unlike the oaks in our backyard forest the pine trees made a
“swishing” sound when a hot wind blew through them. And when their
whispers grew loud, I knew another thunderstorm was on its way. Pine
trees were great to listen to, but not at all good for climbing. Another
sound in my summer concert that I would listen to each night was the horn of a
freight train that made a nightly run through our town. The tracks were
miles away, but some night if the wind was just right I could only hear the clacking of the steel
wheels and even the puffing of steam. And each night as it sounded its
melancholy alert I would wonder where it was coming from and going.
Trains always fascinated me. Making sounds that rode the wind.
Sometimes when the night was very clear and still, I could hear the drone of
the glass factory several miles away. Their behemoth glass machines
hummed another tune as they produced a never ending volcano of moltant
glass.
We learned in school that the famed Carl Sandburg
once visited Millville and later wrote about our little factory town...
"Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass.
By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville
and bid the sand let in the light."
And then there were the storms. I always listened for a far
off rumble of thunder. I was afraid of storms. I think because every
time one came by my grandmother made me come in from playing just because the
sky was turning purple and black. I would protest and she always would
say, “You don’t want to get struck by lightning, do you? I knew a boy
when I was young who was hit by a bolt because he didn’t come in when his
grandmother called him.”
As the booms
became louder, flashes would light my bedroom and each time they got brighter
and I got more scared until I put my head under the pillow. Usually, my
mom would quietly come into my room and lower the windows so the rain wouldn’t
come in. I always pretended I was asleep because she got mad when I was
awake after my bedtime. She worried about me got some reason not getting
“enough” sleep. I always wondered enough for what? And then the
rain would pound on our roof fast and hard and then slow. The rumble got
farther away until it was gone. And soon my sounds of summer faded.
My Summer concert dissolved into the darkness, and I slept until a cawing
blackbird woke me to a morning that smelled good…somehow my windows were open.
As I came in
the kitchen mother would always ask me, “Morning…did you get a good
sleep?” And I chirped, “Yes mom… I got a lot. And
she was satisfied once again.
