Our Environment: “The Waka-Waka Wake Up Call” by Scott Turner
Scott Turner, Environmental Columnist
Our Environment: “The Waka-Waka Wake Up Call” by Scott Turner
How’s that for a natural wake-up call?
The previous night I’d drifted off to sleep, listening to the melancholy-like wails of Common Loons. The owl sounded loonier, reminding me of batty shrieks that once roused me from slumber earlier in life.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhen I was a child, a squat, blond, blue-eyed New York City policeman, lived with his wife and two children in the apartment building across the street. For whatever reason, he was a clenched-fist fellow, powerful in build, and unfriendly to the core.
That officer kept his kids from the rest of us youngsters and his wife from the moms that chatted on the stoop. One way he did this was with those fists. A welt on the side of his spouse’s face, followed by a black eye were telltale signs to follow his orders.
One night some teenagers on the block gathered to party in an apartment in that building. The bash was loud and it spilled out into the courtyard. I slept in a bedroom with two brothers, and the three of us were awakened by the noise.
As we leaned out the bedroom window, party sounds turned to shouts, followed by a gunshot and shrieks. The officer had tried to break up the party, and during the confrontation he shot a kid in the stomach.
After months convalescing, the teen recovered. The officer lost his job, and he and his family moved away.
Then there was Philip. He moved into same apartment building a few years later. Philip was a shouter, whether on the street or in his apartment, and he, too, beat his wife. By now I was a teen, and I gave Philip a wide berth. He was angry, violent and unpredictable.
Late one night, for whatever reason, Philip began screaming at the top of his lungs. Suddenly there was a strident crash and a thud. Philip had lifted-up the family dog—a German shepherd—and thrown it through a window of the fourth-floor apartment. The dog hit the sidewalk and died.
Fannie was a different crazy. She was an Old-World grandmother in a ground-floor apartment, charged with the care of her three grandchildren. One was named Todd, and like most other kids, he played the street games of our youth. Fannie, though, could not leave Todd out of her sight. Todd played stickball, or “off-the-curb,” and Fanny watched, standing on the corner in a soiled housedress, muttering and lamenting that Todd should not hurt himself.
When we played tag, or any game that might take Todd around the block, Fannie would rail at him and us, repeating the full word for S-O-B. If we tried to speak with Fannie, she’d reach down to give us a smack.
Into our teen-age years, Todd grew rebellious, hanging out with tougher kids and getting involved in drinking, drugs and more. Multiple times, Fannie’s middle-of-night wailing on the street corner, “My Todd. My Todd” woke me from slumber.
So, when the loon lamented and the owl chortled in New Hampshire, I was not only cool with it, I welcomed the commotion. The birds were better company than I kept long ago, when clatter outside the window delivered great sadness.
