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.