Sounds of summer In the days before TV and boom boxes, city neighborhoods had to make their own noise And they did
Byrne, Katharine
SOUNDS OF SUMMER Katharine Byrne I am not now remembering bird songs at dawn or the lapping of waves against a shore or the rustle of leaves in sunlight, but the sounds we listened to in a city of...
...Lucky the child whose father could spare a nickel and felt a generous impulse...
...His recital always ended with a song about her...
...My father told me, "Not necessarily...
...Fresh strawberries...
...Since the outpourings of a television set lay for in the future and even a crystal-set radio was rare, we had to generate our own noises...
...Two notes from the bell on his cart announced the scissors man, always a very old Italian whose appeal my mother could never refuse, whether or not her shears needed sharpening...
...But someone vowed to make things better for her, promising to "take you back, Kathleen/To where your heart will feel no pain...
...Most of all this singer loved his mother...
...Those that were musical came from an upright piano on which children practiced their Bach for Beginners or banged out "Chopsticks...
...And Kathleen...
...Each purveyor had his own "commercial...
...I remember asking, "Will the man go home now and give this money to his mother...
...Katharine Byrne writes from Chicago...
...From an open kitchen window you could hear in summer the alley noises of local commerce: the clomp of a milkman's horse...
...A court-building like ours provided a protected and focused area for anyone on foot and with something to sell...
...But first you had to get our attention...
...the cry of the old-rags, old-iron man...
...And when the fields are fresh and green/I will take you to your home again...
...Just picked this morning...
...On a hot summer night the singer of sad songs might appear and stand there in the pale light of the street lamp, wearing his shabby tweed jacket even though the night air was heavy and humid...
...A couple of blasts on a tin horn...
...After the man left the courtyard, in the absence of anything to turn-on or other communication channels to pursue, sometimes my mother played his songs, and we stood around the piano trying to sing them...
...His tearful tenor would "bless the dear fingers so toil-worn for me," and assure her that he loved "the dear silver that shines in your hair/The brow that's all furrowed and wrinkled with care...
...A man with a crate of Michigan strawberries would stand in the middle of the courtyard hollering to housewives above him, "Strawberries, ladies...
...the crack of the iceman's chisel...
...Even old Mr...
...We lived on a treeless street far from water, in a huge complex of four- or five-room apartments built in the shape of a squared-off "U...
...The Sunday-morning balloon man...
...Since there was no air conditioning, our windows were open to possible breezes...
...Beside him on the sidewalk lay his limp cap with the dirty lining...
...or from a wind-up Victrola that played my father's Caruso records...
...A few heads would appear and a little rain of paper-wrapped pennies and nickels would fall near his cap...
...Eckhau's snoring, for his bedroom window was only a few feet from our kitchen table...
...In a final burst, as though his heart would break, he prayed, "God bless you and keep you, Mother Machree...
...Most of the sounds I remember came from the front of the building...
...She was someone who clearly was not happy where she was...
...The summer's come and all the roads are calling./It's you must go and I must bide...
...I learned by listening carefully that this Danny Boy was going away, his leave-taking a source of sorrow to the one he left behind...
...In his whiskey tenor he would sing songs about a boy named Danny and a woman called Kathleen...
...Then he would stand there, looking up at the lighted windows of our apartments...
...SOUNDS OF SUMMER Katharine Byrne I am not now remembering bird songs at dawn or the lapping of waves against a shore or the rustle of leaves in sunlight, but the sounds we listened to in a city of sweltering summers...
...We represented a concentration of prospective customers...
...and also to our neighbors' audible joys or sorrows: their outbursts of anger, laughter, or tears...
...A plaintive "Santa Lucia" meant the organ grinder with his tiny assistant, a red-jacketed monkey who would tip his bellboy's cap if you were brave enough to offer him a penny...
Vol. 123 • July 1996 • No. 13
