TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

LOST SOUNDS

ADVERTISEMENT

By GARY R. MORMINO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 6, 2008

In 1969, on my first day as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I heard as I strolled across campus a noise I could not decipher.

It emanated from Howell Hall, then home to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Peeping into the basement, I discovered the source: 150 freshmen hammering the keyboards of 150 manual Smith Corona typewriters. Their cacophonous clickity-clacks were punctuated by the chimes of 150 return-carriage bells.

The result will not likely be heard again. Journalism students today are more likely huddled over personal computers.

Memorable sounds mark a sense of time and place. Alas, some are lost forever.

Long-ago coastal Florida residents wrote of nights rendered sleepless by vast schools of splashing mullet and, occasionally, their shrieks at the approach of sharks.

Flocks of passenger pigeons so dense they darkened the skies have not been seen or heard in more than a century.

Panthers, wildcats and wolves terrified pioneers with hair-raising screams and howls.

In a 1953 account printed in The Tampa Sunday Tribune, T.D. LaVeigne of Clermont reminisced how in the 1880s, panthers were plentiful in the state's swamps and forests: "Often have I listened at night to a panther screaming on Father's Prairie, to be answered by one some miles away from Billy's Bay."

Vast stretches of long-leaf pines spoke in their own distinctive voice when the wind whistled through their needles. With their numbers diminished, that sound is rarely heard today.

Fort Brooke And The Industrial Revolution

While nature often generated the noises heard 'round the Bay area before the 19th century, that changed in 1824. Fort Brooke sprang to life on the east bank of the Hillsborough River near the confluence of river and bay, bringing with it the music of military drills, bugles and brass bands.

Among the lost sounds of Fort Brooke was the sunset gun, signaling day's end.

Rural life also gave voice to many sounds. Veteran newspaperman Ernest Lyons recalled nostalgically: "What a wonderful sound it is when one cock crows, a big old Rhode Island Red, and another answers him, a White Wyandotte, and another comes in, a Black Minorcan."

Even as the Industrial Revolution began erasing some of those sounds, it added others. Now, mass communications and mass consumption were possible.

In 1844, New England poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was visiting a newspaper office in Maine when an editor proudly announced the successful transmission of the telegraph.

"Now Maine can talk to Florida!" the editor asserted.

"Yes, but has Maine anything to say to Florida?" Emerson asked.

The rush of smoke-belching locomotives, steamboats and printing presses accompanied social and economic change. The factory whistle became a fixture in many American towns. Schools reflected the new order with their bells and blasts to designate the beginning and end of classes.

Not all new sounds were heralded or appreciated. The clack of the iron-clad railroads on steel tracks pleased some but annoyed others.

Ybor Rhythms

The birth of Ybor City in 1886 introduced myriad and exotic sounds: the rhythms of el afilador, the Gallego (a Spaniard from Galicia) who sharpened la chaveta (the curved blade used to trim tobacco); the piruli man, the peddler who sold hard-rock candy, blowing his pito (whistle) to announce his delicacy; the Italian peddlers who chanted "pesce, pesce" ("fish, fish") or who exalted their handpicked eggplant and celery.

One sound, however, was so beloved, so venerated, that when it ceased, thousands wept. That was the voice of el lector (the reader). From 1886 to 1931, hundreds of readers entertained and educated cigarmakers with news, novellas and politics - all in Spanish.

The late Armando Mendez once recounted his return to the Cuesta-Rey factory following the 1931 strike - a bitter labor disturbance that doomed the practice of reading. The boss greeted the workers. Carpenters then promptly dismantled the tribune, the elaborate rostrum from which generations of readers had inflected passages from "Don Quixote" and "From the Earth to the Moon."

Recalling his youthful days in the 1920s, the late Tony Pizzo recollected the extraordinary sounds of his Ybor City: the clippety-clop of horse-drawn dairy wagons and the clanking of glass bottles; the seductive and irresistible noises coming from the windows of the El Dorado, a notorious gambling emporium; and the cries of peddlers selling tripe sandwiches and deviled crabs.

Silencing Technology

Technology continues to sweep away not only outmoded machines, but also their familiar sounds. When was the last time you heard the pop of a flashbulb?

What American younger than 30 has heard the sound of a 16 mm movie projector and the flapping of film tape searching for a sprocket?

What ever happened to cash registers that accepted cash with a gratifying "ka-ching"? The screeching shrill of fingernails on blackboard?

Fifty years ago, reading the Sunday paper was generally accompanied by the gentle sounds of coffee percolating, toast popping through the air and fathers grumbling about politicians and taxes.

In 2008, the rustle of paper has been shushed by the soft clicks of computers. Readers getting their news online no doubt are also picking up their morning Frappuccino and muffin at the local coffee shop.

The only thing that hasn't changed? The grumbling about politicians and taxes..

What sounds do readers miss?

Gary Mormino teaches at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where he directs the Florida Studies Program. You may reach him at the Snell House, 140 Seventh Ave. S., St. Petersburg FL 33701, or e-mail gmormino@stpt.usf.edu.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT