Screen door opening and closing.
Ticking of Big Ben alarm clock on the mantel of grandparent’s house.
Crickets in a cricket box used for fishing trips.
Voice of my grandmother calling me “Sonny Boy.”
Chickens clucking in the yard.
Rain hitting my grandparent’s tin roof and dripping off the edge of the porch.
Rhythm of the rocking chair on the wood porch.
Flapping of paper objects placed on the spokes of my bicycle.
Movement of a wood swing suspended by chains hung on an S-hook.
Grandmother sifting flour.
Pop and Granny’s voices singing a gospel song.
A bottle coke falling out of an old coke machine.
My grandmother’s pressure cooker on the stove.
Frogs at the pond announcing the arrival of dark.
Clicking of an old rotary dial phone.
The whiffling of an overhead two-blade fan.
Turning of an old hand-crank ice-cream churn.
“Blooping” of top water lure being pulled through the water.
Pecans falling from the tree when the shaker shook it.
Blessing being said at mealtime.
My Pop’s stories and his laughter.
The way my grandfather answered the phone, “Yea.”
The sounds from the cattle/hog sale—the animals, the bidders, and the auctioneer.
The unique sound made by my grandfather’s homemade butterbean sheller.
The old singer sewing machine.
The humming of the washing machine on Granny’s back porch.
Gas heaters singing as open flames warmed the house.
Oven door opening as biscuits were cooked every morning.
Sport, my grandfather’s dog would always bark for food if you said, “Speak.”
The sound of my grandfather’s 4-10 shotgun.
Sound a ripe watermelon makes when you thump it in the field.
The brushing of silk out of corn in the summer.
Whistling of the tea kettle.
Puttering of the old Ford garden tractor.
Daddy Floyd slurping his coffee from a saucer.
Popping of firecrackers my cousins from Florida supplied during the holidays.
Sounds from the television – soap operas, game shows, Gene Ragan Farm Report, Andy Griffith Show, Little House on the Prairie, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Waltons, baseball, wrestling on WTVY. (“Silence”- we didn’t make any sounds during wrestling. That was serious stuff.)
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. (In the winter, Pop could make it home in time to watch the news because there was no more daylight to work. Boots off, in front of a crackling fire, he sat tired from a full day on a bulldozer.
If you sit still and listen, it’s amazing what you can hear from decades ago. Fortunately for me, I hear sounds of joy and love from people I loved and people who loved me. Thanks be to God.