It happens every spring. The storm windows go up, the screens comes down and the air conditioner goes in -- and, as a result, the outside world once again seeps into my apartment. What had been a buttoned-up fortress, with double-pane windows plus the storms, is now a porous divider between me and everything going on outside along Bennington Street.
By "everything," I mostly mean the noise: the planes, the sirens, the motorcycles, yes....but also every car that wooshes past, the screeches of children playing, and even people just talking in normal voices as they walk past my windows. I hear every bit.
And then there are the car horns. I hear quite a few of those in any given stretch. Sometimes it's from impatient drivers at the nearby red light, but more often there are people arriving to pick someone up and they lay into the horn without a moment of thought about how that act can disturb everyone else. At the top of the pyramid, for me, is a horn that regularly beeps around 4 a.m. directly across the street from me. Once the nice weather comes the obnoxious beeper frequently wakes me up -- as happened this morning. I tried valiantly, but was unable to fall back to sleep.
This has actually been going on for three years. On some occasions I have gone outside to yell at the beeper. Once I ran over and began screaming at him. The beeping, however, continues. Maybe it is a different person, or various people. Why anyone thinks it is OK to disturb everyone on a city block in the wee hours is beyond me. Doesn't the driver own a cell phone? Can't the passenger be ready at the appointed time?
I spoke to an officer at the East Boston police station and he suggested I get the license plate of the vehicle, so that is what I will attempt to do, though rousing oneself from bed and running outside is tough to do at 4 a.m. We'll see how it goes.
Update (6/8): Well, the horn woke me up again. At 3:50 a.m. I immediately dragged myself out of bed, threw on my sandals, grabbed paper and pen, and marched outside. I took down the license plate of a big SUV as it sat running, and then I walked up to the front of the vehicle. The driver rolled down the window, and I told him he woke me all the time with his horn and that I had his license-plate number. He was around 30, looked to be heading to work and he apologized. If this happens again I will call in his plate to the police.
Oddly enough, I was in Carlisle, a town about 25 miles northwest of Boston, during the 9/11 terror attacks. I had taken a new job that year and was getting ready for my last day of training at a beautiful facility off a rural road. When I pulled into the parking lot a young guy who was also being trained asked if I'd heard that a plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers. I hadn't. My radio must have been off during the drive, probably because it was such a beautiful day and I'd rolled the windows down to feel the fresh country air and didn't want any unnatural sounds to disturb the moment.
ZUMIX kicks off its Summer Concert Series on Sunday with the Seaport Festival, "a free afternoon of music, arts, crafts, games and prizes," this Sunday, July 3, at Piers Park. The event runs from 3 to 6 p.m. and will feature Smokin' Joe and the Henchmen, a classic-rock and soul band. Also on the bill are the ZUMIX Jazz All-Stars, a group of young people I saw play a few weeks ago.
***I remember the day that Jorge Torres was shot. The rookie cop, who was friends with people I knew in East Boston, was hit with three bullets while chasing a bank robber. Officer Roy Sergei was killed by the gunman. After two years of recuperation, Torres tried to return to the job, but he says, "I just wasn't any good any more." Michelle McPhee writes in today's Herald that Torres -- pictured, courtesy of the Herald web site, from 1988 -- is trying to track down his partner that fateful day, Chris Rogers, who is apparently living on the streets.
