Listening to Life

Listening to Life
By Charles E. Kraus
Published in The Oregonian and Oregonlive.com 4/8/18


Life is composed of many elements -- events, sights, expectations, sad moments, and pleasant surprises.  Also, sounds.  These are a few of the things I've heard during the past 72 years: 

Maybe I was four or five, part of a group of neighborhood kids enjoying the afternoon.  A truck cab had parked down the block.  As exotic as it was gigantic, this was just the kind of attractive nuisance we were looking to climb.  And so, we did.  Assembled on the cab roof, one of my associates must have lost his balance.  He pushed against me to regain stability.  The maneuver worked fine, for him. Not so for me.  He remained on the roof while I sailed head first onto the sidewalk.  Dazed, bloody and suffering from a severe concussion, a bomb bursting between my ears.  I can still hear it.

A more pleasant example from my childhood was the exquisite rasp of my father's snoring.  Elongated rumbles boasting their own unique melodic scale, my father was so embarrassed by his languid elegance that he only rented hotel rooms at the farthest end of the corridor where he was least likely to get complaints from guests in adjoining rooms.  His snores may have disturbed others, especially my mother, but they lulled me to sleep.  If I awoke in the middle of the night, right there on the other side of the wall from my parent's bedroom, I listed for my father's snoring.  Hearing it, I knew, just knew, that everything was ok, that he was ok, and that therefore, all of us were just fine.

There was a fellow who sold candy and magazines on the train.  He'd come on board for a few moments working the aisle before we pulled out.  "Candy, Magazines, Chewing Gum," he'd shout in what was surely the loudest, deepest un-amplified voice on earth. 

I found myself in the armory the evening presidential candidate John F. Kennedy was  scheduled for a campaign stop. He was running really late. Inside the old brick edifice came more and more supporters. As the hour grew, maneuvering space shrank. It felt like Time Square on New Year’s Eve, and if it wasn’t exactly a new year, politically we were celebrating a New Frontier.

The sound that too many people make in a confined space, if they are excited and if their voices collide with the walls and ceiling, can charge a united mindset with massive energy. And so, if you are the candidate, the catalyst, and you wait just long enough, if you enter a rally such as this as the wave of enthusiasm reaches its peak and, accompanied by your entourage, make your way onto the stage, then take the last dozen steps, a lone man, buoyed by a rousing reception, if you are JFK, there is a roar so impossibly exquisite, only the sound of another lone man, in Dallas, pulling the trigger of his 6.5 mm Carcano can eventually extinguish the reverberation.

There were two Vietnam associated sounds.

Attached to MCB 71, our base was adjacent the Chu Lai airstrip. The concept of noise abatement did not exist, or if it did, did not apply.  Planes took off or landed every 30 seconds 24/7.  As Phantom Jets reached altitude they created an ear piercing turbulence that could have been the sky ripping apart. And thus, one of the most appalling memories I have of my war days was of a drive two of us were making to deliver parts to a vehicle that had broken down at the far end of the field. We heard a Phantom take off, that immense roar filling the senses. The fighter came so close vibrations shook our bodies. Then, all of a sudden, the noise stopped. Just quit. This was an eerie silence. Not merely because of the contrast it made with what we’d been hearing, but for a more important reason. We knew what it meant. The plane’s jet engine had shut down. There would be a crash. I do not know the next part for sure, but what we thought was that the trajectory of the fighter sent it hurling towards a small school house . The pilot could eject, allowing his plane to continue on course, or he could stay onboard and do his best to alter things. He did not eject. With all the sights and sounds of war, what I remember most is that silence, the moments that followed, and looking off in the distance where the school house remained standing.

Our battalion flew back to the States reaching Davisville, RI in the middle of a January night.  After stowing my gear and cleaning up, I set out alone through the silently approaching morning.   My peacoat offered little resistance to the numbing winter temperature.  I crossed a calm, quiet, lonely base, hearing the sounds made as my boots sank into the crust of ice that forms on New England snow, thinking that just a plane ride ago, I’d been experiencing the monsoon season and a military exercise called Vietnam.  In the span of two days, the war had become part of my past. The walk had a feeling, a feeling that returns when I recall the quiet crunch of steps through the snow, the calmest, most serene journey I believe I have ever made. 

There was the sound, the sight and sound, of Jackie Wilson arriving late for his spot at a sold out rock and roll revival.  After a song or two, he stopped the proceedings.  Explained he'd been traveling all day and had not had a chance to rehearse.  Looking so weary, he vocalized with the band, exercising his voice.  And then, when he was ready, Jackie sang us To Be Loved, building and building until he reached for and slammed the final note out of the venue.

I'll tell you the sounds that made me the happiest over the years.  These took place during my active parenting phase.  It's early morning.  I'm up.  Probably pacing.  Waiting for one of my kids to come home from a party or event.  Lots of cars have driven by, their approaches giving me a taste of relief only to be followed by the fading sound of vehicles continuing down the road.  Then, finally, a daughter pulls up in the driveway.  A car door closes.  There are footsteps on the stairs and my child is home.   That's the best, most melodic, meaning full, pleasing, joyful sound known to the human ear.