Wasn’t this past weekend lovely?
Ipswich is beautiful.
Well, on certain days.
Yes, it was a disappointing winter — too little snow, too much cold, not much fun. And yes, the spring season already feels endless, with temperatures most days hovering just low enough on the scale that you can’t quite yet put your winter clothes in the attic.
But last Saturday was positively sub-tropical.
And Sunday, marvelously mild!
And with the arrival of this springtime gift of great weather comes the obligatory companion gift of springtime sounds.
As I sit on my screen porch with my laptop on my lap, reveling in the near-miracle of being able to work in outdoors in New England in April, I am greeted by the return of all those delightful auditory signals that tell you spring has sprung.
“GAAAAAARGH!” That’s my neighbor’s lawnmower. A big gas-hog lawnmower. A lawnmower as big as a Volkswagen. Not the Beetle; I’m talking the old VW bus, like the hippies used to cover in flower art. “GAAAAAARGH!” is just my poor attempt at spelling the sound of this monster. It actually goes on much longer than that. It would take several screens full of the letter A to accurately replicate what I’m hearing as I sit in the lovely outdoors trying to write this post.
“KOOOOOOOOOOSH! KOOSH! KOOSH! KOOSH!” This is the sound of a young guy a couple doors down, doing a good deed. He’s got a huge leaf-blower, the kind you wear on your back, and he’s clearing out six months’ worth of wet leaves and concomitant debris that has collected in the strip of vegetation along the edge of outer Linebrook Road. As he commands this massive machinery, the damp, blackish detritus piles up on the asphalt, forcing cars to detour down Plains Road just to avoid crashing into the mountain of glop, never to be heard from again. (One happy springtime side-effect of this process: A number of potholes on Linebrook Road are temporarily filled.)
“BL-BL-BL-BLAT-B-B-B!” Motorcycles.
“KACK! KACK! KACK!” Another neighbor has been waiting all winter to re-attach that darn step leading up to his back door. He loves his nail gun, and I don’t blame him. And kacking a back door stair step only takes a few quick kacks. But of course, when you’ve got such a nifty nail gun, you keep finding other kacking opportunities. May as well reinforceallthose back door stair steps, eh? And the front ones, too, while you’re at it. A single warm day just seems to bring out kackability potential all around your property. Don’t those crossbeams holding up the breezeway roof look a little shaky to you? No worries. “KACK! KACK! KACK!”
“BL-BL-BL-BLAT-B-B-B!” More motorcycles.
“AIEEEEE!” The neighbor’s charming children, and their friends from all over the neighborhood, are exulting in the beautiful weather by playing a harmless game of Destroy the Universe. Or at least this is how it sounds to me. I can’t see them for the trees, but from what I hear, Ormulus has decided to torture Ramfamine for information about the Cromulan Orp, before ultimately saving the galaxy by twisting the evil one’s arms off.
“BL-BL-BL-BLAT-B-B-B!”
Eh, that’s enough. The sun is going down, the temperature is dropping. I’m going inside now, and closing all the doors and windows, where I can listen in peace to the clanging of the radiators as the furnace kicks back on.
Doug Brendel lives on outer Linebrook Road, with a wife, a daughter, and a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Follow him by quietly clicking the “Follow” button.
The Outsidah 