Getting Close to Silence

Lawn mowers and motorcycles

It has been getting rather quiet in my neighborhood lately. The biggest reason for this is the empty streets. There is very little traffic. Usually there are almost always cars and trucks and motorcycles that can be heard but now there are long stretches of time when not a single vehicle is on the streets.

While walking yesterday I came to the four-lane highway that is just three and a half blocks from where I live. As I was trained to do as a child, I looked both ways before walking across the highway. To my shock there was not one single vehicle on the highway as far as I could see. I do not recall that ever happening before.

And I did not see any people walking around either. The town looked utterly deserted. I felt like I had slipped into some heavenly dimension while also feeling like I had slipped into some post-apocalyptic scenario where humans no longer existed. It was weird.

This morning I was luxuriating in the silence (all I could hear was birdsong) when some human started up a gas-powered lawn mower somewhere about two or three blocks to the west of me. (All my windows are wide open.) It is a faint sound but as this person is now mowing their yard I find the noise very soothing — almost hypnotic. I am really enjoying it.

My next-door neighbor who lives in the house next to the apartment building is a Harley-Davidson freak. He even named his little yappy dog, Harley. Every Sunday from the beginning of spring until Thanksgiving he hosts a Harley-Davidson whoopjamboree in his back yard. His back yard is essentially a dirt parking lot.

Usually there are between twenty-five and thirty Harley-Davidson motorcycles parked in his yard during these Sunday parties. There is always one point in the party when all the owners of the bikes get on their bikes, turn them on, then sit there and rev the engines. The noise is so loud that the entire apartment building shakes. Even with my windows closed it is impossible to watch a movie because I can’t hear a thing the actors are saying. It is pointless to turn on any music because I simply can’t hear it over the motorcycle noise. They will sit there and rev their engines for about an hour.

I am not a motorcycle person. I don’t know the first thing about them. I rode a dirt bike once when I was a teenager and haven’t been on a motorcycle since. From my perspective of ignorance I have learned that the most important thing about a motorcycle is not its speed or power or make and design or how much it cost or how cherry it is. Apparently, the most important thing about a motorcycle is how loud it is.

(Ann Litts , please feel free to set me straight on this.)

So every Sunday for eight months of the year I can look out my kitchen window and see twenty-five to thirty Harley-Davidson freaks revving their engines in a competition to see who has the loudest motorcycle. It is like some bizarre testosterone ritual religiously adhered to on Sundays — much like a religious cult.

Every Sunday morning I put up with those darn church bells in the morning and then ear-shattering motorcycles in the afternoon.

Sundays in America.

Thank goodness it’s only one day a week. And then there is that one weekend of quiet in August when all the bikers go to Sturgis. Having put up with it for the last six years, it really doesn’t bother me. I have grown quite accustomed to it. It’s a normal part of life here on the prairie.

Well, this past Sunday my neighbor had his first Harley-Davidson whoopjamboree of the year. I was giving one of my houseplants a haircut when the motorcycle symphony commenced. I could immediately tell that there was something very wrong!

Plant snippers in hand, I went to the kitchen window and looked out. I was shocked to see that there were only three Harley-Davidsons being revved. Only three! And they were not very close to each other. Motorcycle distancing?

And apparently most of the bikers were distancing by not showing up for the whoopjamboree. Is this going to be a much quieter summer? Will the social fabric of life here in the sticks be forever changed? Will the drop in carbon monoxide emissions help heal the planet? Will beer companies go bankrupt?

Well, the human mowing their lawn has finished and it is once again eerily quiet. Now all I hear are the birdies, my own laughter, and the rat-a-tat-tat of my laptop keyboard.

The world has changed.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Writings of White Feather

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