Alarm Clocks

The other day in the article about the sounds that come to my home on the wind, Loopy said something about the siren that still blows at noon everyday from the local volunteer fire department. I’m a bit surprised to hear that in the day where every volunteer has a scanner or a plectron; that sirens are still sounded at all.

In the town where I grew up there were five volunteer fire departments, two of which were in ear shot of where I lived. One station had a siren and the other had a loud horn. The horn had a code that by counting the horn blasts you could tell where the fire was. Every day at Noon the siren and horn would sound; I suppose as a test. Then they would go off again at 5PM as another test. They were somewhat convenient because if you worked within ear shot you would know when the lunch hour began and when your work day was over. You wouldn’t think it was so great if you lived within a half mile of the horn. It was very loud and very sudden. It could scare the crap out of anyone unsuspecting of the sound.

We also had a mill in town that would blow a steam whistle at 7AM and 12:30PM. These were convenient as well by telling you if you heard the 7AM whistle you were going to be late if you were still in bed, and the 12:30pm one told you when lunch was over.

The odd thing about the steam whistle was that it had no bearing to any operation or crew shift at the mill. It was something that was set up when the mill was built in the late 1800s. No one knew why or how the whistle even sounded. No one knew how to alter the timing or even prevent it from going off. Even if there was a power failure the whistle would still sound as though it were hooked to some cosmic team clock. It may be some phantom or ghost whistle. I’ll need to ask some relatives if it still goes off. The mill has been closed for several years now. It still may be operational.