The Sounds of the City

We moved from Oklahoma City to the farm in 1951, when I was in the third grade. I remember very little about living in the city, so most of my memories of childhood are of the farm. The sounds of the farm were mostly soft sounds, subtle sounds. I remember the wind in the huge elm trees outside my bedroom window. I remember the child-like wailing of the coyotes. The lowing of the cattle. We lived on a gravel road so there was not even any traffic noise to speak of. Now, I live in Chicago. The world outside my window is a radically different sound universe.

Between those early years and now I have lived in a variety of locations, mostly in cities, but occasionally in the country. But I suspect the sounds of Chicago are unique to this great city. For me the dominant sound is that of the L system; there is an elevated track just across the street from my building. But I live on the back side of the building, so the train sounds are muted, especially during the day. At night I can hear the trains softly in the background. The Brown Line doesn’t run all night, but the Red Line goes twenty-four hours a day, and since the Red doesn’t stop at the station near me, it roars by. With the windows open, which they usually are except the hottest nights of summer, there’s no escaping the sound of the train as it races by. I find it surprisingly calming. But waiting for the bus under the tracks is a different matter. I wonder that we’re not all made partially deaf by the roar right over our heads.

Sirens are another issue. All sorts of people stick their fingers in their ears as the ambulances and police cars race by, including me. But at night I rarely hear them; someone told me once that the police try not to use them during the night hours. Maybe so. But, as I said, I’m on the back side of the building so the sirens that I do hear at night are rarely a problem.

People! Now there’s a source for noise. Since I’m generally not fond of people anyway (I do make a few exceptions), it doesn’t take much people noise to aggravate me, whether it’s a group of teens yelling on the train or those idiots with their windows down and the music blasting. Being on the back of the building also shelters from a lot of people noise; but I live between Wrigley Field and DePaul University, and for some reason inebriated college students like to navigate my alley—yelling drunkenly, obviously unaware of how sound travels at night.

Particularly unwelcome sounds are the bangings and beepings of the garbage trucks early in the morning. Just today, at 5:20 a.m., one was in the alley right below my eighth floor window, throwing, apparently, garbage cans all over the pavement. And usually they turn off their back-up beeper before 6:00. Not this numb-nuts. With my alarm going off in 20 minutes, my last little bit of sleep was ruined. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen all that often.

But the oddest sound is the subtle murmur of the city at night. I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what it is. No doubt a part of it is traffic, but there seems to be something else besides, something organic to the life of the city, as though the city were a living, breathing being. I find that sound oddly comforting.

A Mobile Life

As of August 15, I have lived at the same address in Chicago for ten years. That is the longest I have ever lived at any one address.

I never intended to be so mobile. A quick check online and I see that the average person in the United States is expected to move 11.4 times in his or her lifetime. My number of moves is 29. It’s not a competition, but for someone who hasn’t spent decades in the military, I seemed to have moved a lot. I’ve lived in five states and the District of Columbia. I’ve lived in 13 different cities (see the red stars on the map), multiple locations in most. I wasn’t sure how to count my time on the USS Galveston, but decided it was one location, even though I traveled all over the world on the ship. And there were the odd weeks when I moved back with my parents, usually while in transition; for example, I lived with them a couple of weeks while awaiting my trip to boot camp in San Diego. I didn’t count these short stays as part of the 29.

So why so many moves? A few were for very good reasons: I moved near my mother in her final years, for example. Some were for love and romance: I first moved to Dallas to be with my partner, Don; we lived in seven homes in our seven years together. Don loved remodeling and reselling houses. Most of my moves were simple restlessness. Until my final teaching post before retirement, I never stayed more than five years in a job: new job, new location. Most led to interesting experiences, a few to one minor disaster or another (I loved San Diego, but it was a financial disaster for me).

I’ve tried to think what might have made me so restless. Perhaps it was all that reading I did as a kid, from such soul-inspiring book as Two Years Before the Mast to more than a few books of SF and fantasy—escape literature, after all. Maybe that led to my constant escape from wherever I was. Maybe it was always the search for something better, even if ill conceived: I wanted something better, even if I didn’t always use good sense in the endeavor.

Now, I’ve been settled for ten years, and I don’t seem to miss the moving. Of course old age has something to do with it: I’m no longer able to fill up a van with boxes of books and head out. I have finally come home to roost, it seems. I’m okay with that.

Half a Century Later, Part IV: Cleaning up My Act

“Deck force” is a slang term for the division on a ship that mostly includes boatswain’s mates. Their responsibility is the maintenance of the ship, including upkeep of a ship's external structure, rigging, deck equipment, and boats, and, most memorably for me, holystoning the teak ceremonial decks. These are good hardworking men, and I don’t want to denigrate them in any way; still, one could hardly call them the intellectual giants on a ship. And me, being me, did not take well to manual labor.

After my captain’s mast, where I was removed from the administrative division and placed on the deck force, I had to endure some punishment: working in the engine room where the temperatures can reach well over 100 degrees; and a stint working in the paint locker, which was the only time I became seasick: the locker was in the bow and I was there during a storm. As the ship crashed up and down, the paint thinner fumes wafted up and I became violently ill. I left the paint locker so sick that I didn’t care if they keelhauled me; I just had to throw up and then lay down, preferably not at the same time. Nobody seemed to miss me, though, which was a good thing.

The most memorable event while on the deck force was holystoning. Look at the image: you bend over, broom stick inserted in a sandy brick, and you go back and forth 20 times on each of the teak boards (ships are metal, but the ceremonial decks have an overlay of teak). It’s brutal and backbreaking labor, it lasts for days, and I don’t remember ever working so hard and so painfully—and I was raised on a farm which required a lot of manual labor. I was miserable. If you’re interested, here’s a video on holystoning (on the USS Missouri, not my ship) which, for me, brings back painful memories:

Holystoning video: https://youtu.be/dktL8MdZWF8

I probably would have finished out my days in the Navy on the deck force had I not already taken the exam for advancement to personnelman 3^rd class before being kicked out of X Division. While on the deck force I found out I had passed the exam and would be made a PN3—X Division had to take me back. It was at that moment I accepted the fact that the Navy was going to win this battle; I became a model sailor, shoes always gleaming, uniforms crisp and clean, and my work, now in the personnel office, always perfect and on time. I became the perfect sailor.

And truthfully all that work at being shipshape made my life much easier. Mostly I worked in the office dealing with enlisted records (officer records were handled elsewhere). When we spent six months off the coast of Vietnam, using our six-inch guns to give support to troops ashore, we were at battle stations a lot of the time. For me that meant Damage Control Central. Since we were never damaged, that time was mostly spent reading. Occasionally I had duty on the bridge as either a watchman or as the man who transmitted messages on a sound-powered headset. War for me was more a battle against boredom than anything else.

After our tour in Vietnam we went on a goodwill tour. This took us down the Pacific coast, through the Panama Canal, up the east coast, and then on to the Mediterranean, with stops in Malta, Italy, Corsica, Spain, France, and Crete. “Join the Navy and see the world!” That turned out to be the case for me.

My four years ended while in Europe. Rather than having to fly back, I opted to extend my duty until the end of the cruise, which turned out to be another month. By then my commanding officers wanted very much for me to stay in the Navy. I had passed the exam for PN2. But I had had enough of the Navy. Within an hour of docking back in the United States, I was out of the Navy and headed home. It felt good.