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Missed sounds

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Al Baker(pumpman)

Member
The posts about Detroit diesels made me think of other sounds I used to rear every day that are all but gone.In this neighborhood each evening if calm you could hear different silo unloaders throwing silage against the shoot. Sometimes even smell it if the wind was right. I miss walking into the barn and hearing all the stanchions squeaking. I really miss the sound of Grandma in the distance calling the cows from the pasture. Anyone else miss a sound?
 
I miss back when I was a little kid in the early 90s and there were still a bunch of smaller farms going around here. Come harvest time you could walk out the door and tell which neighbors were running in which fields just by listening to the sound of the combines all around. Especially the 88 series Cases, the Cummins power plants in those things had a drone that couldnt be mistaken for anything else. Now most of those guys have retired and the farms have been swallowed up by larger ones. The way it is now seems like one day all the fields are standing full and the next everything is gone without hardly a murmur from any piece of equipment. Harvest season just doesnt feel the same that it used to.
 
The sound of ear corn banging on the metal gravity wagon bed. Spent many hours riding in the wagon kicking corn into the corners so dad could finish the round. The one sound I don't miss is the metal scoop shovel on scraping concrete as I scoop the ear corn into the feed grinder,but loved to thud as the shovel smashed a rat on the floor as I was scooping.
 
I miss hearing the rhythm of the windmill working away as I went to sleep, and waking up to the sound of the cattle demanding something to eat.
 
My daughter baby sits for a 3 year old, so we get to see him. He makes engine sounds when playing with tractors. He has the sound of a high speed Diesel down pat, but not the put put I would have done with the low speed engines of my day. I did get my old 130 JD out for him to play with, he pulls the lever back so it makes put put sound when it should be running, then pushes lever forward to shut it off.
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There's a very specific tick to a manifold leak on an early 60's Ford grain truck. I listened to that tick for hours growing up. One of my old straight trucks has a little bit of a tick to it but it's a GMC and isn't the same. The old Chrysler straight six on the Massey combine could really bellow. There's no sound like that one either.
 
All the sounds from filling silo back in the early 1970's. We had all IH forage equipment and the 50 chopper had its distinct hum along with the table blower. The IH silage wagons had the ratchet type drive so it had a clicking noise while unloading. The chopper is still here but the other stuff is long gone.
 
Lots of sounds... like the dogs clicking in the old IH #6 mower when you backed the team a step and turned them to make a square corner. The old copper cow bells clanging as the Jersey girls came down off the mountain in the afternoon. Trace chains jingling and harness creaking. And lastly, but maybe my favorite: A Super MTA Farmall punched out, with M&W Stroker crank and straight pipe, pulling 3-14's sunk to the beams in sandy ground at dusk. If you plowed late enough, you could see the glow from the manifold and the flame about 6 or 8" high. Reckon she was ran a little rich?

Mac
 
The alternating sounds of the two milking machines in Grandpas barn on the Brown Swiss' at milking time in the 1950's. Also on our own farm in '60's, the sounds of hoofs and water gurgling when the cattle would come up from the woods in the middle of the night to get a drink as us boys slept out under the stars in our back yard on hot Aug nites.
 
I really miss the sound of my uncle's 49 JD A pulling a 5 disc tiller on Grandma's farm about 1/3 mile from our house. Also a cotton farmer's JD A about 3/4 mile away cultivating cotton way after dark.
Also miss the sound of my sawmill as it cut through a pine or poplar log. Still have the sawmill, but haven't used it in years.
Used to be a fellow about 3/4 mile away would play his trumpet in the evenings on his porch.
His favorite was "When the Saints Go Marching In".
All of these were 50 or more years ago.
Richard in NW SC
 
The steam whistle.Here in western Ohio we grew tobacco. Each spring the steam engine would make his round though the neighborhood to steam everyone's tobacco beds to kill the weed seed before we planted the tobacco seed in the beds.You could here here him at neighboring farms blowing his whistle, you knew it would not be long before he would be at your house to do yours. So you had better be ready.
 
Yeah, the distinctive sound of a cut and throw forage harvester. I believe the old NH 717 and S717 could be heard for the longest distance. The sound of silo filling with the old AC belt driven blower. Pop's WC Allis and Farmall M both had a very distinctive sound. The AC D-17 had that same sound as the WC. The sound of Blizzard ensilage cutter chopping baled hay for bedding and blowing it into a square silo in the corner of the barn. The steam whistle at the old JP Lewis mill in Beaver Falls where my grandfather worked as a fireman.
 
The voice of a girl I went with long ago. The echoes between the buildings on main street of Cushman scooters from a group I rode with as a teenager.
 
The chuckle of the Chrysler Industrial 6-cylinder engine in a Cockshutt combine gobbling up large windrows.
 
The low humming sound of the bow plane tilting motor on the old diesel-electric submarine I rode in the early 1960's. My bunk was adjacent to that big motor in the Forward Torpedo room.
 
Sound of my cousin's Super M with wide open throttle pulling a wagon load of hay bales after dark on a summer evening thru the southern Ozark hills while we rode on top of the bales and watched the flames shoot out the cherry red straight pipe.
 

The plunger arm of the old NH baler when making hay. The clicking of the old NH side delivery rack running around the field and the clink of the side loader chains pulling bales of hay up the to truck.

Then at the end of the day when all was shutdown hearing the quiet before the Whipper Wills started their night calls.
 
Seems like we did this a while back but I still enjoy reading the posts. Some of mine are the slam of a wooden framed screen door behind you when your coming in for supper, that brings up the topic of favorite smells too. The train whistle as it echos up the river when it crosses the highway by the bridge. The sound of the rooster crowing on a crisp fall morning. The frogs croaking on the pond in the early spring. And my favorite, the sound of the choir singing when someone comes forward to change their life.
 
The sounds coming from the outhouse one night when Uncle Fred discovered a squirrel trapped inside and the door wouldn't open.
 
The John Deere 60 Orchard pull a offset chopper in the big orange grove across from my house. The sound of my fathers old Ford pickup pulling in the yard late at night after he had worked a 16 hour shift at the fertilizer plant. The sound my mom's old Singer sewing machine made when she was sewing. And most of all the sound of a big covey quail when my father told his best bird dog to Flush'm boy!
 
. Listening to an old neighbor who pulled 4 plows with an old JD D in the evening after milking he would be off on a distant hill side plowing and the bark of that overloaded old D was music to hear. He would plow till after dark. We also had JD D's but only pulled 3 plows. Always thought that 4 bottoms were too much. Oh but to go back once more to hear that sound.
 
Yeah, I started a neighborhood a sound post a while back. But now we're in a different season and I'm thinking about different sounds. The beating of a cob elevator. The banging of a reset plow. The buzz of chainsaws, wait, neighbor still does that one. I miss the hum of the small outboard running the trap line on the lake shore. The hum and ting of a sharp buzz saw. I kinda miss Pa's voice, but his memory makes me smile.
 
Double-headed steam locomotives, or, perhaps 2 EMD 1500 HP F units, pulling on the front end of a freight consist while the local steam helper pushed on the caboose to push the heavy freights up out of the Ohio river valley west of Aurora, IN in the mid to late 1950s.

Dean
 
Hi John Deere D, do you know where that picture was taken? My dad worked for the NAR in the Calder yards in Edmonton during the depression. Quite possibly worked on that engine!!. Leon
 
Leon r

Photo was taken at Dunvegan Yard AB............

# 73 2-8-0 was retired October,28,1960........

I was informed # 73 is operational at Edmonton AB...

Bob..
 
To keep it tractor related, I miss the special sound of the 460 gas, the WD-45 with the straight pipe, and the 4010 Diesel.
 
Coyotes howling in the creek bottom in back of my shop on a cold winter night whenever a train went past a mile away.

The sound of the exhaust of a GMC crew cab dually with headers and glasspack mufflers I once owned turning about 3,000 rpm pulling a trailer.

The sound of a jet fighter plane catching an arresting cable on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. (The instant the wheels touch, the pilot slams the throttles wide open in case he misses a wire and has to go around).

Taps at night on any military base. (I don't miss reveille).

I could go on.
 
(quoted from post at 08:15:47 10/27/16) The posts about Detroit diesels made me think of other sounds I used to rear every day that are all but gone.In this neighborhood each evening if calm you could hear different silo unloaders throwing silage against the shoot. Sometimes even smell it if the wind was right. I miss walking into the barn and hearing all the stanchions squeaking. I really miss the sound of Grandma in the distance calling the cows from the pasture. Anyone else miss a sound?
Click to expand...

The sound of the wind moaning around the eaves of my grandpa's farmhouse as I drifted off to sleep........spooky to some but a lullaby to me. 8)
 
I miss the chirping whistle call of the female quail and the answering "Bob-bob-white" of the male. Haven't heard that in 30 years. It has also been several years since I heard the "chip-fell-out-of-the-whiteoak" of the whippoorwill. Some people say the disappearance of the quail, woodcock and road-runner is due to habitat loss, and that may be a factor, but I blame it mostly on fire ants. Ground-nesting birds were doomed when the fire ants came in.
 
Oliver 880 diesel at combat speed, pulling a plow or disc. Pulsators on the Surge bucket milkers, and the stanchions banging as the cows ate. Perfect rhythm of the sprinkler heads on the irrigation pipes.
 
(quoted from post at 02:47:54 10/28/16) I miss the chirping whistle call of the female quail and the answering "Bob-bob-white" of the male. Haven't heard that in 30 years. It has also been several years since I heard the "chip-fell-out-of-the-whiteoak" of the whippoorwill. Some people say the disappearance of the quail, woodcock and road-runner is due to habitat loss, and that may be a factor, but I blame it mostly on fire ants. Ground-nesting birds were doomed when the fire ants came in.
Click to expand...

Jerry those are 2 of my favorites too. I no longer see many quail here either. and there is plenty of habitat. I have thought that they disappeared when the armadillos moved in. About the same time the game&fish department brought in red tailed hawks.
 
Jerry, I also miss the Whip-poor-will. When I was a little kid many, many years ago I would fall asleep listening to the whip-poor-will
in the butternut tree outside my bedroom window. Haven't heard one in years.
Another sound was the cowbell our neighbor always put on one of his cows when he put them out to pasture. It was about a quarter mile away up on the side hill and the sound was always there in the background during the summer. I had almost forgotten how soothing that sound was.
When I got to be a teenager, I enjoyed different sounds, like the neighbor's WC Allis pulling a set of drags and glasspacks on my Ford flathead V-8. LOL
 
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