The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
12/07/2014 column
The bells are ringing throughout the town announcing the season of Christmas. I have a love/hate relationship with bells. I love the sound of cheery bells and the announcements they foretell. I dread the sound of mourning bells and the announcements they proclaim. The bells can be a call to help, a call to talk, a call to remember or a call to celebrate.
Katie and Austin have been ringing bells and singing Christmas carols as they welcome shoppers to area stores. The tiny tin bells they ring announce a call to help all of our neighbors this holiday season. I always try to carry some extra bills in my coat pocket to slip into the little red buckets.
The bell we hear most often around our place is the phone announcing a conversation. I am surprised at how many times the phone will have to ring before anyone moves a muscle to answer it. Our teenagers just ignore the ringing phone. Their reasoning is that it won’t be for them anyway. Ok, they’re probably right.
I don’t think any of their friends know our home phone number by heart. But when it is me calling the house from the barn phone at chore time to see where they are, it is convenient for them to ignore the call and hurry outside with an innocent face.
It seems strange to me the nonchalant attitude they have toward phone calls today. When we were growing up there was only one phone in house and it was located where everyone could hear your end of the conversation. I think most phone were mounted on the kitchen wall. You were lucky if the curly, often tangled cord was long enough to step outside on the porch or the sit on the top step to the basement for some privacy. Of course with it being a party line, there was never such a thing as a private conversation. Before the first ring was complete, we would fly off the couch, knocking each other down to reach the phone first.
By the second or third ring the call would be answered with echoes of “I got it! It’s for me!” in the background. Even without caller id we knew the call had to be for us. Most times it was, but it was such a disappointment when it was for our parents. We thought they surely didn’t have a social life.
Today most calls in the evening are for either Mark or me. Very rarely does the phone in the house ring for the kids. There are no more bells ringing to announce a call for them, only buzzing phones. But there is still the race to answer the call. I am amazed at how quickly they can flip open their cell phones with an incoming text message. It seems like no one talks out loud anymore. They all just text back and forth.
Bells have always been a part of our lives. When Jonathon and Michael were very little, Santa arrived while they were taking their bath.
They heard to sleigh bells hanging on the kitchen door ring as Santa tried to sneak into the house to deliver his presents.
We didn’t have a chimney for him to slip down so he had to come in the door. After that scene, every time they heard the kitchen bells they would start looking for presents left by Santa.
My favorite bell is from the one-room school house my dad attended. I would love to mount it near our house so we could have a farm bell like my grandparents. They had a belfry in their house. Grandma would open the closet door and pull the cord rocking the bell back and forth to call the field hands and grandpa to the house for meals. It was always a special treat to ring the bell at Grandma’s house. The sound of the big old bell bellowing out its “gong” throughout the farm is such a pull toward home even after all of these years.
The only bells I dread are the ones from my alarm clock announcing the morning. I have a hard time registering the start of a brand new day with total darkness.
I slap the snooze button for 8 more minutes of peace and quiet before the world around me wakes up to another round of morning bells.
The sounds of ringing bells are a part of our life regardless of the season, but they seem to stand out during the holidays in songs and traditions. The sound of copper cow bells moving across the pasture for milking time. The full sound of church bells peeling in joy.
The clanging gong of dinner bells calling everyone to the table. Even the pesky alarm clock bells waking us from our sleep. Regardless of the sound, the message is the same…”Attention! Attention! It is time to come home.”
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As their four children pursue dairy careers off the family farm, Natalie and Mark are starting a new adventure of milking registered Holsteins just because they like good cows on their farm north of Rice, Minnesota.
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