Sounds of the Season

NPR has a new feature on their All Things Considered evening news show. They have asked listeners to submit short essays on the sounds that will forever say "Summer" to them. It is called Sounds of the Season and I thought I'd take a crack at it. I couldn't decide among three aural memories that fairly scream "summer" to me. The first is the sound of blueclaw crabs steaming in a big white enamel pot on the stove. The second is the sound of crushed clamshells and gravel under the wheels of our old wood-paneled station wagon as we pulled into the driveway at my grandparents' beach house. And the third is the one I settled on--the sound of baseball cards flapping against bike spokes as I pedaled around the suburban streets of Wilmington, Delaware. Here it is:




In 1972 I turned seven years old and Richard Nixon won re-election in a landslide. More important than either of these milestones, I got my first two-wheel bike as a present from my parents. It was bright orange with a golden-speckled green banana seat and it ROCKED. I lived in suburban Wilmington, Delaware and my brothers and I had free run of the entire neighborhood on our bikes. We had aunts and uncles and cousins in all directions and no matter where we went, someone had an eye out for us.

I loved that bike. And to make it even more special I used to attach baseball cards to the front and rear forks using clothes pins. As the wheels spun, the baseball cards would click against each spoke. I think the intent was to sound like a motorcycle, but I can’t say for sure. What I can say is the faster I pedaled, the faster the clicking. My goal was to go so fast the clicking sounded like one continuous noise.

That year was momentous to me for another reason. It was the year I finally got tired of what I saw as my family’s mindless loyalty to the professional sports teams of Philadelphia. I had my dad write down the rivals of Philadelphia’s four major sports teams—the Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, and Eagles---and I immediately adopted the four teams he wrote down as my favorites. 37 years later, I still root for the NY Rangers, Boston Celtics, Washington Redskins, and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Today, baseball cards seem to have become solely something people collect as an investment. So a sound that I will forever associate with summer is one I just about never hear anymore. The soundtrack to my summer memories from those idyllic suburban Delaware summer days has the click-click-click of Wayne Twitchell on my front wheel and Denny Doyle on the back, each being slowly mutilated as I put on the miles.

At What Cost?

I took Isabel and Erica to the airport in the dark early this morning. While driving back up I-95 toward Connecticut I was listening to the news on NPR and I heard a story about Mashpee, Massachusetts and how this small town of 14,000 people had suffered a terrible loss in the past two weeks. Two recent high school graduates, one from the class of 2005 and the other from the class of 2007, had died in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t know either of the young men who died, but hearing interviews with their friends and families left me feeling very sad.

And then very angry.


The mother of one of the dead soldiers consoled herself with the knowledge that her son died protecting the freedoms of all Americans. Her heartfelt belief in the truth of her son’s sacrifice was the saddest thing I have heard in a long time. Because the war in Iraq has gone on so long I have started to forget the burning anger I once felt at President Bush for starting an unnecessary and unwarranted war of aggression. But this mother's hurt and her pride brought my rage at George Bush right back up to the surface.
His horrendously flawed judgment has cost tens of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, America’s moral credibility, and a sad mother in Mashpee her son—a son I am afraid died for nothing but the misguided ineptitude of a man with too much power and not enough brains.