Background Noise: Addendum

I called to wish my sister Dawne a happy birthday tonight. She told me how much she'd liked this entry. I wasn't surprised - she grew up there too.

"Did you tell him how you knew it was summer when you heard the cars at the race track?" I heard my brother in-law ask.

He makes an excellent point. The sound of Saturday nights in the summer, then: race car engines, bellowing from before sunset until well after midnight. The cars were loud and clear in my neighborhood, and on most summer nights you could hear them all over town. I don't remember hearing any after we got here, post-hurricane, but I was preoccupied. Will I be able to hear them way out here in Marion? Time will tell.

I was talking to Julie, my other sister, not long ago about children cussing and how cute it is and whatnot. She told me whenever she and her daughter would drive into West Memphis in the summertime they'd get hit with the unmistakable sewer smell of broken pipes on the east side of town - where we lived. "Smells like someone knocked over the shithouse!" Julie would say. She stopped saying that when Lynne repeated it back to her.

"But that's just how summertime smelled," I told Julie, "it's kind of pleasant, really. Nostalgic."