Oops! Well, yes, I have just shown my age…! Those Normans were pretty rockin’!
Audrey, I have the same thing with the sound of car blinkers. It brings back memories of dozing off in the back of the car and hearing them in the quiet and knowing we were almost home. It’s usually associated with snow and christmas lights too. I remember being fascinated with the mystical department store dings too. The sound of a tea kettle whistling reminds me of hearing it in bed and knowing that mom would get me up for school soon.
And definitely the Good Humor Man ice cream truck song.
The sound of hard plastic wheels on concrete (think bigwheel or Green Machine)
The sound of my grandmother cooking breakfast. Her and my grandpa had sausage, eggs, bacon and biscuits, gravy every day until they died in their mid 80s. At home, my room was too far away to hear breakfast “frying up”, and now I have no one to cook for me.
“Just two good ole boys. Never meaning no harm. Beats all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they were born.” I’m sure it was a terrible TV show and I have no interest in seeing it again or watching the movie, but it was the coolest thing on earth at the time.
My evil stepmom practicing piano after we went to bed. FFS, I’m 6, let me sleep!
The sound of my grandmother calling me and my aunt and uncle to the dinner table. The sound of my then-teenage uncle singing R&B music in a falsetto voice as he washed his hands in the bathroom. My grandpa giggling at me for refusing his earnestly offered beet. Oh, beets. How I hate beets. And then the inevitable sound of clattering dishes, rushing water, clearing the table afterward and then arguing with my '‘siblings’ (aunt/uncle) about who was going to dry the dishes. The cupboard doors banging open and closed. It was like clockwork almost every weekend, for several years. I wish to God I’d known it was going to end, that the house and the people in it would fall apart and decay and become shadows of their former selves. I would have appreciated it so much more if I had known.
Blackbirds. I lived in Melbourne and it was cool enough for the introduced European birds to thrive in our garden under the Camelia trees. When I first heard the background calls in ‘Blackbird’ on the Beatles White album it took me right back to Cedar Street…
Not a sound but the smell of something in the store when my mother bought school supplies for the new school year. I don’t know what it was but I have smelt it as an adult in stationary stores and it took me straight back to getting ready for third grade.