If you’ve read my blog, you know I love music. I love singing. I love listening to a lot of different kinds of music, but especially oldies that I can still remember all the words to, and songs from my teenage and college years that I can sing along with. Oh, also Broadway tunes. And especially Christmas carols! All the feels!
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Sounds of Time
Besides music, I’m also quite inspired by sounds that instantly put me in a place or time that maybe I’d even forgotten about. Does that ever happen to you? If you’re a child of the 50s or 60s you might remember the sound of the original “digital” clocks—the motorized flip clocks with numbers 0-9 on four sets of plastic tiles on a Rolodex-type gear. Each tile fell into place with a “whirrrrr kerplunk” as the minutes and hours changed. That’s the way I remember it, anyway. My husband remembers a different sound with his clock and maybe you do, too. What about the blaring old alarm clocks that blasted you out of a sound sleep, sometimes causing arms and legs to flail if it interrupted a dream—or turned it into a nightmare! They annoyed me enough to wake me up!
Can you hear me now?
Back in the day, many elevators had a distinctive 3-tone chime, and often a silky voice would announce what floor you were on as the door slid open. As I write about these sounds, I can hear them in my mind’s ear. Can you? I wonder if there are people who aren’t able to conjure up remembered sounds. I had a psychology professor once who told us some people are not able to visualize objects—such as a juicy red apple. Do you see it? I do! But some people can’t, and that professor was one of them. I feel like a whole dimension might be missing for me if I couldn’t see, hear, and smell my memories.
Disney Magic
Walt Disney understood the power of emotions and nostalgia wrapped up in sounds. I love coming up to the train station in New Orleans Square and hearing the tickety-tick of the telegraph. And I can still hear the “all aboard!” of the conductor. And can’t you just hear the clip-clop of the carriage horses’ hooves down Main Street? Sounds are infused into every ride at Disneyland—usually from the moment you step into line—not only the obvious ones, but subtle background noises that you might not even notice. They help create the mood and foster the nostalgia.
At the Tone the Time Will Be…
I was reminded recently of the lady who told us the time on the phone when I was young. In some areas you could dial the corresponding numbers for POPCORN to get the precise time. A very handy thing when your watch died or the time changed. Before computerized and atomic clocks, we could always rely on the lady in the phone, who sat there 24 hours a day waiting for us to call. In sweet cadence she announced, “At the tone, the time will be 8:05,” or whatever Greenwich Mean Time was at that moment, followed by the clear ding of the “tone” we were promised.
The Voices of Our Memories
There were only two women through the decades who recorded all those minutes and hours (turns out they didn’t just sit there waiting for us to call, to the surprise of many children). In the late 20s (that’s 1920s—I guess we should start clarifying that these days), actual telephone operators often would tell a caller the time as a public service. But in 1948 the time system was automated and Mary Moore, an Atlanta housewife, spoke the times in dulcet tones when you dialed POPCORN. It was fun just to listen to her, and people even sent Christmas cards to “the girl who gives the time.” At some point AT&T stopped making the sound of the tone, and Mary just said, “the time is….” until 1976, when another woman, Jane Barbe, who could mimic different regional accents, recorded the times again. She was heard for the next 30 or so years.
For a couple of fun articles and pictures of the two time ladies from 1948 and 1976, click here. There is also a video of some of the phrases as they were heard at the time. We all recognized these voices for many years, so it’s pure nostalgia hearing them again.
The End of Time
On August 29, 2007, the LA Times printed an article which began, “It’s the end of time, at least as far as AT&T is concerned.” Southern California customers received this anticlimactic note in their phone bills: “Effective September 2007, Time of Day information service will be discontinued.” It was the end of an era, and we couldn’t call the time lady anymore.
But all is not lost. If all your phones, cable boxes, and atomic clocks cease giving you the accurate time, you can call the Navy! The Naval Oceanography Portal lists the phone numbers out of Washington, DC and Colorado Springs, CO that you can call if you really wanna know the time. The site states, “USNO provides both voice announcements of the time, and services to synchronize systems over telephone modems.” So there ya go!
Speaking of phones…dial tones, busy signals, and the individual sound of each number being dialed on a rotary phone were part of the background noises of our lives. I grew up in a small town and our family even had a party line when I was young, complete with made-to-order teaching moments on manners. Our kids will never know the thrill of accidentally hearing something juicy on the party line or having to exercise patience waiting for the long-winded person using the phone to finish his or her conversation. Now we have call waiting and voice recognition, and dial tones and busy signals are a thing of the past. Now our sounds have names like Alexa and Siri and everyone has their own personal phone. But I can still hear those sounds in my mind’s ear.
The Quick Brown Fox…
Even though I was a typing teacher for many, many years (you’re welcome, all those touch typists I taught), Mavis Beacon taught my girls how to type 🤷🏼♀️. Apparently it’s more fun to learn from a computer than from your mom. Hey, at least they both are excellent touch typists. It saved many hours in typing papers. In fact, I made money typing papers for my classmates in college. But a sound I will never forget is the ding of the carriage return. What’s a carriage return, you ask? On a manual typewriter—don’t even look for a cord or battery or computer chip—it was the lever on the left side that you threw to the right to move the platen (roller) into position every time you began a new line on your typing paper. And the ding actually happened just before the fling of the lever to tell you that you were done with that line so “hit return”—I mean “fling that lever!” As a typing teacher, my world was also filled with thousands (okay maybe just dozens, but it sounded like thousands) of clacking keys. The sound still makes me happy, like when I hear it in old movies or in this amazing “Typewriter” song. However, I don’t like the keys on my computer to make noise, thank you very much. It’s “clackety clack” or nothing for a seasoned typist like me.
Show Me the Money
The onomatopoeic term “Cha-Ching” has become synonymous with easy money in the 21st Century. But I remember it as the actual chiming sound I heard the mechanical cash register make right before the drawer flew out to hit me in the ribs when I worked at Safeway in my teens. I quickly learned an awkward maneuver to avoid being bruised by the money in my narrow little checkout stand, and maybe even invented a new dance. But that’s what “Cha-Ching” brings to my mind.
Does not Compute
There are so many old computer sounds and game sounds I could mention that you would instantly “hear” in your mind’s ear if you’re a baby boomer like me. Like the sound of the “paddles” connecting with the “ball” in the Pong game. Pong, as most people know, was an incredibly innovative (though oh so quaint and one-dimensional now) “ping-pong” game hooked up to your tv which, for the first time, enabled us to interact with our television sets. It was all the rage there for awhile. You can check it out here if you somehow missed out on it or just want to relive the thrill!
You might remember the startup chime for the happy Mac (a computer, not a hamburger), courtesy of Steve Jobs and Apple. Hopefully you didn’t hear the sound of the sad Mac, AKA the chimes of death, very often. But who can forget the ear-splitting, teeth-jarring screech of the original dial-up to get on the internet? I can still hear that in my mind’s ear, too, unfortunately. But if you can’t, and you really want to experience the cringe-worthy screech again, click here and enjoy.
Wakka Wakka
When my husband and I first married, we were 30-year-old Pac-Man junkies. Who knows why. We didn’t typically play arcade games. But this was our thing. Every time we saw the game we had to play it. Actually, we usually played Ms. Pac-Man. It was the improved version of the original Pac-Man, but they were virtually the same game in different colors and with a bow. When I think about it, I can hear again the unmistakeable onomatopoeic “wakka wakka” and the descending glissando that accompanied Ms. Pac-Man’s demise as we fed the game quarter after quarter. Gives me warm fuzzies. Good times!
If you’re feeling nostalgic for those old computer sounds, you can hear a selection of them again here. You’re welcome.
Just a Few More
Do you remember when you could hear the traffic signals when the lights changed? That was a long time ago, but it happened. And maybe you still have a ticking clock—we used to have one in the living room and our very young daughter thought for a while it was the crocodile from Peter Pan coming after her. Mostly we don’t miss the tick. But the sound of a chiming or cuckoo clock is nice on occasion.
As a non-coffee drinker, I’ve almost forgotten waking up to the sound of my mom’s percolator. But we had a guinea pig once that sounded just like it. If you’ve forgotten the sound, Maxwell House recorded it for posterity, and you should really watch their vintage commercial here. It’s not so much the sounds as the memories they evoke.
Let’s Hear it for Sounds!
So many sounds draw us in and transport us to the past, but I will tell you my very favorite sound, a sound that changed my life twice in the very best way. I hadn’t heard it in over 25 years when I went to the obstetrician’s office with my daughter to hear her baby’s heartbeat. I was not expecting the tears that sprang to my eyes as that precious sound immediately took me back to the times I first heard her sister’s and her heartbeats. That is one of the sweetest, most incredible sounds in the world—the sound of new life.
What sound tickles your mind’s ear when you hear it? What sounds do you miss? My husband confessed he occasionally—not often, but occasionally—misses the sound of the LA freeway traffic he grew up hearing. Maybe you grew up where there was a train and can still hear the whistle as you lie down to sleep. Or the crash of ocean waves or the “clang clang” of the cable cars of San Francisco or New Orleans. Or church bells ringing on Sunday morning. Or mooing, baaing, and cockadoodledoing if you grew up in the country. Or maybe, like most people in the world, I feel sure, your favorite sound is the infectious giggle of a child. I’d love to hear all about it—let’s talk in the comments below. Remind me of other sounds I’ve forgotten! And be sure to sign up to receive my emails and goodies. Can’t wait to hear from you!
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