I don’t know if this is a sound that would transport me back to childhood, but I haven’t heard it since then, so maybe: the sound of that first handheld NFL game–the touchdown “music”.
Old commercial jingles (I’m a Pepper), a screen door slapping shut, a shell held up to my ear, crickets/cicadas, a bicycle bell or the sound of the bike headlight generator whizzing on the rear wheel (they don’t make these anymore, apparently), ice cream trucks with old fashioned music (not Music Box Dancer), jump ropes slapping pavement, ditto old fashioned roller skates (not blades), dinner bells (also unheard today), a newspaper landing on the front porch and lastly, a creaky swing on a playground.
The “cling, cling…cling” of a school yard flagpole rope being gently touched against the metal pole by the late afternoon breezes after the flag has been taken down for the day.
Kurt Vonnegut called it the most lonesome sound in the world; the sound of “five o’clock in the afternnon all over America.”
The sound of the lights going off in a crowded classroom. For an instant everyone stops whatever they were doing and let out a semi-silent collective gasp, hoping as only an innocent child can that the power will stay off and they’ll have to send us home from this hell. Then the lights come on seconds later an there is an equally semi-silent groan of dissapointment.
It’s funny, but the sounds I most associate with childhood are the ones from summer and Christmas visits to my grandparents’ house. They’d put us kids to bed on the sofabed in the livingroom. Then they’d sit in the diningroom and play pinochle. So there’s the sound of conversation and laughter in the next room, mixed with the sounds of cards being shuffled. And cigarettes begin lit with zippo lighters. You know, the cap opening, then the wheel being sparked?
And in the morning, the old coffee percolator burping up a pot of coffee. Granny cooking–usually pancakes. Mmmmm.
And blackbirds and mockingbirds outside the house, during the daytime. I loved them. Also, my grandparents lived in the middle of acres and acres of orange grove, so I remember the sounds of tractors and trucks moving through the grove as people tended them.
Mostly… The sound of a break, in billiards. Started playing pool at five. Was a hustler the age of 10. Okay, not a “hustler” per say, but I was at a veteran’s level. I lived in the pool haul (lived a block away). I’ve played quite a bit of pool… Though, not so much the past 2 years.
Back in the day when kids played outside, we used to do this high-pitched call, like “Hee-oh-eeeeet,” and somewhere in the neighborhood, a random kid would almost always answer. Much like neighborhood dogs barking at twilight, another childhood sound.
The sounds of Big Wheels and handheld lawn clippers.
Definitely the cicadas. And the far off sounds of mothers calling their children. We’d go out after supper and not come home til dark–the various kids would keep an ear out for their mothers calling them in for the evening. It was the mid-sixties, and that was how it was done in my neighborhood.
The sound of a school bus accelerating or decelerating.
Sorta related. As a child, my dad always got us up 2 or 3 hours before sunrise (which is pretty early in the summer in the south) so that the sun was rising as the boat was heading out into the gulf.
I’ve only gone fishing like that a couple of times in the 3 decades since, but every time I get up early in the dark, moving/driving around in that cool high humidity, it still to this day “feels” like I am going fishing.
Yeah, the Mr. Softee truck music.
Just about everything Robardin wrote except the TV console.
And the sound of the swing set in the back yard that really needed to be oiled and every time I was on the swings it would squeak EXACTLY like the sound in this song. So whenever I hear the song, I’m 6 again.
The music and sounds of Street Fighter 2 on the SNES. The summer between 7th and 8th grade a kid down the street and I played that game every day for hours on end.
I still have the SNES and SF2 and I like to bust it out every now and then and kick the computers ass. It’s not even a challenge but it’s still fun.
You know I’ll think I’ll bust it out after work and get my nostalgia on.
An old-school coffee-maker…the kind that “burps” faster and faster as it finishes brewing.
And oddly, the sound of blinkers. Car blinkers.
As an adult I have always played music in the car; I don’t ever hear my blinkers.
But my mother routinely had the radio off, or so low you could barely hear it. So hearing that little “plink plink” reminds me of being a kid, not old enough to drive, running errands with my mom.
The hose topping off the swimming pool intersected by the sw-swoooooossshhhh of two cars passing each other in opposite directions. Then, after the small prop plane faded away, just the sound of the running water again.
Home:
The sound of my mother cleaning the floor in the kitchen - the swish of the mop and the slosh of the cloth as she wrung it out in the bucket, the radio on with 1060’s/70’s music coming out, the smell of pinesol and cold air flowing through the house as she always opened the window as she worked.
Holidays:
We always camped in a caravan. Me and my brother tucked up in the bunk beds with the curtain drawn over them, rain on the roof, the gaslight hissing, and my parents playing crib - the snick of the cards and “15 -2, 15-4, 15 -6 and one for his nob” “Ooooh you bugger!”
The cosiest sound in the world!
The funny thing about the camping memory is that a few years ago my parents asked us what we remembered of our trips all over Europe as kids, and BOTH of us said being tucked up in bed and listening to them playing crib! It seems that Rome, Paris, Budapest etc had much less of a lasting impression!!
i had forgotten about the secret department store code. only one in phila used it. strawbridge and clothier. plink, plink, plink,…pliiiiink, plink, plink. they also had the nifty pnuematic tubes for money exchanges. they still used both until the strawbridge family sold the store. it seemed like the plinks were non-stop.
Me too.