Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Windows Open

After a long winter of being closed up tight my bedroom windows were finally unlocked and opened when the temperatures began rising as summer finally replaced a cool spring. Summer night temperatures makes for a deeper night's sleep. Deep sleep has a scrubbing affect on the mind, all the whys and wherefores of a day's activity gets thought over again and again as the head sinks nicely into a cool pillow. Nodding off, the scrubbing process begins as the mind prepares for a new day.

Something comes along with cooler night air other than deep sleep and that's sounds which enter an open window with ease. The other night sounds were sirens : ambulance, police, and fire from midnight to three AM, but these I'm used to, in town they're sounding off all day long. They're there, but who cares about sounds so common they just blend into background noises, accepted and ignored.

It is the crows, though, that caw the early morning light into being at 5AM or before. Roosting in the high pines across Evans St. they must wake pissed off at each other and make their complaints vocal. Their guttural caw-caw-caw could awaken the dead, if not, cause some geezer like me their demise. I can take their clatter during the day, but at 5AM, give me a break. 

A good night of sleep with the windows open is a carryover from my youth living mostly out of town in what was then referred to as the country. Seventy-five years ago in a time when most families never experienced air conditioning, pulling down the shades during the day to keep out the heat of the sun and opening the windows at night to capture cool breezes, was a country boy's idea of air conditioning. You can take a boy out of the country; but, you can't take the country out of the boy. 

Ronald C. Downie

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