Before he turns onto my street, I can hear him coming – the big young man in the small old car. And my muscles tighten up at the thought of his approach. In truth it is not him or his vehicle that I anticipate with much anxiety, but the cannon-like sounds that emanate from the massive speakers that go off inside the driver’s salmon can on wheels. Every second and a half another explosion rocks the neighbourhood as the steady booming of a bass guitar or bass drums or atomic bomb, or whatever, accompanies the “music” that shoots up from the car’s tapedeck like the roar of wind that precedes a tornado.
A very strange spectacle this is. I watch from my porch as the sideshow unfolds: little tin biscuit box rolls up, bouncing up and down from the vibrations from so many decibels and finally comes to a stop in front of a neighbour’s house. The “car” sits idling a few minutes more as the driver awaits the conclusion of the “song”, the lyrics of which I cannot make out but I which I imagine run along this vein: “Yo, man. Whatcha gonna do? Face on you like my daddy’s old shoe …”
And as if this aural assault from the speaker “system” was not enough, the car is equipped with a muffler that would make a combine harvester sound like a bathroom fan. It is designed to proclaim, with each light tap by the driver on the accelerator’s pedal, “Verumph, verumph-verumph, verrrrummmmph.” Translated into English, this series of verumphs mean, “Hello world! I’m heeeeheeeerrrr!!! Aren’t I something????”
Finally, the engine and the stereo are shut down and a semblance of peace returns to Shady Street. Birds dare once again to fly down out of the trees and resume their search for supper and neighbourhood mamas loosen their grips on their babies.
A door on the recently volcanic auto flies open and allows the exit of a young man wearing baggy shorts, backwards baseball cap, forehead sunglasses and a dazed look on his face that suggests there may actually be some side effects to riding around all day in a formation of glass, plastic and steel, roughly the size of a large riding lawnmower, with the equivalent of five marching bands playing in the back seat about 14 inches from your head. Never having actually seen an unfortunate victim of world war “shell shock”, I wonder, nevertheless, if this is the look such a poor soul would have had about him.
l have only enough time to shake my greying head in wonderment when I hear another little “boombox” approaching my street from the other direction, heading for the same address as the first. It too bounces down the asphalt like an out-of-control fireworks display until it joins the first car along the curb and ejects its crazed driver with the same disarray as did the first one. Soon there are four such tiny tinker toys lined up along the sidewalk and peace returns for a while until they’re once again ignited and blasted off in four directions at the conclusion of the day.
What a long way our modern world has come. First there was the breakthrough of the car which came equipped with its own radio. Now, we have the radio that comes equipped with its own car.
As one who has been known to crank up the volume in his own little vehicle from time to time – when I cry along with Hank Williams I really want to cry – I am nevertheless suitably aghast, given my advancing years, at what we have wrought through our ingenuity and lack of concern for the eardrums of others. At times like these, I can’t help but think back to my ancestors and what quiet existences they experienced. If it were possible for my great-great-grandfather, for example, to sit on my veranda with me and endure this assault and battery by auto and battery, I wonder what his reaction might be. I honestly think he’d get up and run away, though family lore paints him as anything but a faint-hearted man. I think he’d climb on board the next sailing ship he could find and emigrate back to Ireland.
But, good luck to him if he did. That country nowadays has more small vehicles than Santa’s workshop at Christmas. Every one of them equipped with a sound “machine.”
When they say there still is no peace in Ireland, I don’t doubt it a bit. There’s no peace anywhere in the world anymore where thin males with fat wallets are allowed to ride around in tiny tanks with Titanic tweeters and woofers, rattling the doors and windows of our homes like mini-earthquakes.
Of course, I am all for peace in troubled countries. I hope I live long enough to see it.
In the meantime, I could do with a little peace …
And quiet.
©2004 Jim Hagarty
