Sounds of Summer

This is the noisiest summer I can recall since the time our Siamese female was "in heat." (If this was a Family Guy episode the screen would flashback to a cameo of a young Siamese cat roaming about the house wailing until she finds the (neutered) male. She gets in front of him offering a good rut. He just sits there with a quizzical look on his face wondering what's for dinner... In the next scene, she has been taken to a breeder and is introduced to a big fat smiling stud, who knows exactly what to do. Fade to waves rolling-in. ) That was about ten years ago.


So, what happened to the once-quiet, "sleepy" suburbs? Maybe it just seemed quieter when I was a full time worker. In those days I would out of the house and locked in the daily commute with the radio turned-up by the time the landscape guys swarmed into the neighborhood with their infernal noise machines, or the tree cutters with their gas powered chain saws. And what tree job would be complete without the noisiest device ever to be invented by man - the wood chipper.


Around here, it has not been quiet in years. We live a few hundred yards away from the local railroad station so we get a regular dose of very loud horn blasting by all approaching Amtrak and freight trains. Railroad rules, we are told. Every house on this street - including ours - has had some sort of noisy building project that involved loudtalking men with hammers and saws. And their Boomboxes, of course. Oh, and let us not forget the ubiquitous compressor motor that runs all day.


The latest neighborhood construction job is particularly aggravating since it involves a custom stone wall made of New England Schist. This will not be like the silent wall of Robert Frosts memories - glacially rounded boulders that eventually succumb to gravity. No, this wall is built out of flat sections of sedimentary granite. Each stone is sawed from a larger piece and hammer trimmed, fitted and cemented well enough to survive a nuclear attack. The masons are diligent, working from 7:30am to dusk, which is past dinnertime hereabouts. The noise is irritating.

So that's why I am using these high tech earplugs so I can take a nap. Huh? did someone say something?