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In
one of his essays Scott Russell Sanders writes that in centuries past
Japanese villagers were cautioned never to wander so far from their
homes that they could not hear the village drummer. In ancient times
Asians considered drums to be the most important of all musical instruments.
The drum beat may have represented security to the villagers by suggesting
to them the mother’s heartbeat heard in the fetal stage.
Since I grew up on a farm in North Texas, thousands of miles from
Japan and centuries after the era to which Sanders refers, there was
no village drummer to give me a sense of security. Unlike the larger
schools to the west and east of our rural school, we had no marching
band with bass drums. Except for the sticks, tambourines, clogs and
woodblocks of the rhythm band in the primary school, the only musical
instruments at the our school were a piano in the auditorium and a
piano in the room in the gymnasium where a teacher came from a nearby
town to give private lessons.
In our community, there was, however, a sound comparable to a drum
beat that, on occasion, proved comforting by reminding me that I was
not far away from my home. Approximately three miles from our farm
there was the Saltillo Station, operated by the Gulf Pipe Line Company,
a subsidiary of Gulf Oil. When we stepped outside our houses, except
for times when there was high wind or heavy rain, those of us who
lived in a three-or four-mile radius of the area could hear the sounds
made by six generators in the pump room of that station. The metronomic
sound from the generators was comparable to the throbbing of a giant’s
pulse.
No more than two generators were ever shut down at the same time and
then only when they needed to be cleaned or repaired. The sound of
the generators was a constant we could depend on, yet one that we
were hardly conscious of hearing. We became accustomed to the sound
of the generators as one who lives near a busy railroad track becomes
accustomed to the sound of trains on the rails. |
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There
are two experiences from my boyhood that are linked to the sound of
the generators. They were both ordinary experiences, like those the
poet William Wordsworth describes as “spots of time.” There were certain
incidents that occurred in Wordsworth’s boyhood during times when
he was alone that lingered in his mind for years afterward. He described
the particular sights he saw and the sounds he heard. In later years,
in his solitude, he recalled the emotions he experienced during one
of these “spots of time.” Some of his finest poetry was inspired by
these experiences. |
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One evening when
I was fourteen I attended a party for members of my ninth-grade class.
Since I lived five miles from the home of the classmate whose mother
gave the party, I arranged to spend the night with my sister and her
husband, who lived nearby. After the party ended that evening, I walked
along the highway past quiet houses and the darkened windows of the
frame building where the post office, the drug store, and the barber
shop were located. During the three or four minutes that it took me
to walk to my sister’s house, no cars or trucks traveled on the highway.
The clouds were heavy that spring evening, so there was no light from
the moon. As I walked on the shoulder of the highway, I could hear
little else but the pulsing sound of the generators at the pump station
almost a mile away. The sound was comforting to me in my solitude.
I had heard the sound hundreds of times before, but that evening the
sound was somehow more noticeable.
Another time, two or three years later, a high school classmate gave
me a ride home one summer evening after we had attended a movie in
a town nearby. I stepped out of the pickup truck the friend was driving,
and, after he drove away, I stood for a few moments at the crossroads
near our farm house. The light from a full moon was reflected against
the white sand of the roadway. It was a clear, windless evening. The
only sounds were the sounds of the grasshoppers in the field just
north of our house and the sound of the generators at the pump station.
Though the sound from the generators was mechanical, it sounded as
natural as and more comforting than the sounds the grasshoppers made.
I stood for several moments as if transfixed.
The Gulf Pipe Line Company abandoned the Saltillo Station in 1958.
I had left Saltillo a few years before in order to accept a teaching
position in South Texas. I wonder whether, if I had still been living
there when the generators shut down, how long it would have been before
I noticed that the sound of the generators had stopped.
I prefer to believe that I would have immediately begun to miss hearing
the sound.
© Robert
G. Cowser
June 30 , 2007 Guest Column
More Columns by Robert
G. Cowser |
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