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Every House Has Its Own Song
By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury
A house has a mind of its own and does any number of "things" at times when you will worry most.
A while ago I heard what I thought was water dripping—but where? After some peering in the kitchen and bathroom and at the basement sink, I found that the rhythmic "drip, drip" sound was one of the dogs cleaning his feet. With each lick his license tag hit the floor, so the measured sound imitated a dripping faucet.
One of my friends heard a shutter banging, so she went outside to check around all the windows. This tour around the house revealed no shutter activity, and the sound was much fainter outside than in. What could it be? As she went in the front hall door she heard the "thump, thump, thump" loud and clear. So she began to search the house—inside, this time. Very quickly she heard the thumping more loudly and she ran upstairs. On his bed sat her teenage son, who was banging the side of his bed with his heels in time with the music on his radio. Shutter problem solved.
Another of my friends who has been trying for a year to get roofers to put a new roof on her substantial house finally got them working on the task. What really pushed them to get to work was the considerable leak in the corner of her living room. The roofers could not find wet spots anywhere on the roof, even under the flashing. But my friend had lost her patience with the water sliding down the living room wall and all her furniture stacked on the other side of the room. The water made a little shushing sound, which has been silenced with the new roof on and the leak stopped. The leak, the shushing and the old roof were undoubtedly connected in some way that was not readily apparent. When she lay in bed before the roof was repaired, she had heard (or imagined she heard, as we all do hear things we don't want to hear) the shushing leak and she could visualize the further mess it was making of her living room. The new roof has solved the leak and, finally, her sleeplessness.
The worst lack of sound I have encountered was on a night the thermometer read minus 32 degrees, the coldest we have ever had before or since. I woke up—something was wrong with the rhythm of the house. My husband slept blissfully on. I got up and realized after a few minutes that the furnace was not running. I dashed to the basement and tried all the things I had been told to do to make the furnace get over its megrims or whatever bothered it. Nothing worked. So I called our plumber, who said, "I'll be right there." And he was—almost as soon as I got back to the basement he arrived. Within 15 minutes the reassuring hum of the furnace was going again. The furnace magician (I was sure our plumber was a magician) said, "If you hadn't called for help everything in the house would have been frozen up by morning. You did the right thing!" I was relieved that there wasn't something simple that would have solved the problem that I could have done, because then my face would have been red. This time the problem was the lack of the rhythmic sound in the house, and not a strange noise.
Whether it is an unusual thump, twang or drip—when the house rhythm changes we (who don't think we are even listening) stop whatever we are doing to find what causes the change. Every house has its own "song."
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