I’m lucky enough to be able to hear children playing, at least in the summer and after school spring and fall. I live adjacent to a park, though it’s screened by trees. My neighbor hates the “racket,” but I love it.
I haven’t seen a small town fair/carnival in years.
The flashing lights and sounds of various iterations of carousels, the Ferris wheel; the various games booths, like the ring toss, or throwing darts at balloons for a live goldfish; the smell of cotton candy, hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries*, funnel cake…
*Yes, I know you can walk into many a restaurant and smell all of that, but it loses a certain je nais sais quoi that carnivals have.
I have to agree with this. The sound of a steel plunger hitting a steel bracket, when you’re playing pinball, is extremely satisfying.
Today’s machines are as much fun as pinballs ever were, and the “squeaky horn blat” that signifies a replay is nice–but not nearly as satisfying as that “clack!” that the old electromechanical games made.
Birdsong. Not much of it in Japan, as compared to Australia.
The scent of newly mown grass. I only get it here in Tucson if I am driving by the Westin right after their golf course has been cut.
The sound of snowflakes on my coat.
I can relate to this.
Also, the sounds and feel of the old-school Vegas slot machines. I remember dropping a “silver” dollar in (they were Ike doallars), hearing it fall, then the *feel *and clu-clunk of the handle as you pull it. The best sound, though, is the sound of the dollar coins pouring out into your plastic bucket when you hit something good.
There’s one that regularly comes around our neighborhood. It takes forever to do it’s local round. So a lot of Turkey in the Straw. A lot.
It has been around a few times in the past week. (It was 68 at 8am this morning. So the weather is cooperating.)
The strange gulpy hum of the 800K Mac floppy drive when you insert a diskette.
The bloop bloop bloop of the percolator brewing the coffee.
The sound of the VHS tape player rewinding then going thonk when it reaches the end; the squidgy sound of the tape being ejected.
The ding-ding of the hose you drive over at the service station that alerts the attendant that a customer is there.
There’s a pinball machine at my office (this one, as a matter of fact). The joke is that it’s more fun to fix than it is to play. I’ve gotten good enough at it to get a replay reasonably often. Yes, nothing sounds quite like that ‘thunk’.
And there was a traveling carnival just across the street last spring.
Not so much a sound, but the lack thereof…
…a starlit field, deep winter, lighting up fresh-fallen snow. The incredible hush, the feeling of peace, that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. I’ve very rarely experienced it over the last twenty years, and I do miss it.
I thought of something yesterday, but I wasn’t sure it belonged… until I read your lovely post. The way snow quiets everything… I can (not) hear it now. 
Another moment of suspended peace: a summer afternoon. So quiet. Bright blue sky. A few clouds. Maybe you’re sitting in the grass, feeling the enveloping warmth. The only sound is waaaay up in the sky, the steady, comforting drone (back when that was only a sound) of an airplane.
Good one!
My grandparents home was in the oil fields. The chug chug of the pumps was soothing after getting accustomed to it.
My granddad maintained the wells and he could identify by (lack of) sound when one quit working. He’d leave late at night to fix it.
When I was a young’n I would spend my summer weekends at a marina on Lake Erie. At night, while lying in my bunk, I could hear “ting ting ting” emanating from each sailboat when the wind was blowing. I’m not sure what was making the sound. I think it was a metal fixture tapping onto the mast or something. At any rate, I found it quite soothing hearing them all “ting ting ting-ing” together. It was like an orchestra.
When I was in grade school a bunch of homes were being built across the street from us. I used to play in the mounds of dirt, and loved the smell of the dirt & clay. To this day, when I smell the same thing (when digging a hole or whatever), it takes me back to the “playground” across the street from where I once lived.
As for sights, there’s nothing quite like opening the back cover an old console TV, and seeing a dozen or more glowing tubes.
-The sight and sound of thousands of starlings in flight. If you see this while driving pull over and listen to it.
-A Lockheed Constellation in flight. A beautiful plane that sounds great.
-Watching a Concorde approach to land and then touching down right next to you. A majestic sight.
-A train passing you and hearing the Doppler shift as the last car goes by along with the clatter of the train.
-the sound and smell of tar bubbles as we popped them walking barefoot in the street as kids.
Every morning at 4:30, right before I leave for work, there’s the mournful sound of train horns about 2 miles away. On days I don’t go to work I hear them and smile. Such a lovely sound.
The sound of a train’s air horn in the distance was exactly what I was going to say even before I saw the post above mine. It’s maybe not a “sound of the past” since trains still exist (although in some urban areas they don’t blow their horns anymore), but it’s a sound of my past – when I moved to California it was the first time in my life I didn’t live within earshot of an active railroad track.
Seconded. Just the mention of it took me straight back to childhood, the Regent Petrol (OK, gas) station in the village that used to double as a coal depot, Green Shield Stamps (just read gift coupons, if they weren’t a thing where you grew up) … wow.
j
The small town gas station took me back to how in the winter, when things were slow for farmers, my dad would go to the station and play cribbage with the owner/operator. That slapping sound of playing cards being shuffled is another one I don’t hear very often any more. Don’t know many card players and most people seem to play solitaire on their computers these days.