alarms, bells, and things that go BuMp in the night!

I spotted today, outside my bedroom window this red alarm bell.  I investigated further, and found out that each condo unit has one on the wall mounted outside by the front doors.  Each walkway leads to two front doors along a concrete canyon, so when and if that red bell does ring it’s gonna make a racket. 

 

What is it used for? Fire? Earthquakes? Eating too much at a meal? One is to wonder…. I do know that I am proudly practiced in screaming like a girl, or letting out a banshee yell that curdles milk. (I am rather proud of that yell!) (That yell almost got me booted off a Merry-go round in Jersey years ago…)

 

When my sister, brother and I were young kids, our father brought home a portable Westinghouse reel-to-reel tape recorder.  It had a wired microphone to “speak” into.  I can still remember the smell of the leather case today.  The three of us spent crazy hours sitting around the dining room table making recordings.

 

 Oh those were the days!  We either made up gangster voices we heard in the detective movies, or were chickens clucking along to songs or having chicken fights…”cluck, cluck, CLUCK!”   (Kudos to our mother for buying us the record, “Henrietta the Chicken sings opera”) Sometimes the chickens were gangsters. Hahaha. 

 

Being one who was rather vocal I perfected my murderous scream to the delight of my older bro and sis.  I don’t think my mother appreciated my screams, but they were Hollywood quality dying screams!! We would then play back our recordings and just laughed until we cried!  “You dirty rat, you killed…(insert scream here!!) hahaha. I would scream just to let it out.  Oh man.

 

 Those days Perry Mason was on T.V.  I even could impersonate his furrowed brow, or screw up my face to resemble those bad guys, Sam, Bub, Lou and Hal.  Sam had a closed left eye, mouth drawn down to the right, and a deep voice. Bub had the opposite facial tics and so on.  (Go ahead try it…) 

 To this day, I think I walk around with that Perry Mason furrowed brow! I have the deep wrinkle to prove it.  I guess the wind changed while I had my face contorted!

 

So sadly if that red alarm bells does ring, you can be sure that from socal to NJ and back, everyone will hear loud gangster clucking or a murderous scream that will most likely get us invited out of this library quiet neighborhood.  One thing I am certain of, I know I will be the bump in the night, like a flying projectile right into my bedroom ceiling!