JOY ALONG THE WAY: COULD WE HAVE AN OFFICIAL SOUND?

It is customary for states and nations to have a designated flower, bird, flag, tree, sometimes even animal, insect, rock, etc.

I don't believe that these entities have a designated sound. If so, would California's sound be the crackling of forest fires, slushy rumble of mudslides, ominous muttering of ground beneath the feet, whining wheels on the freeway? Kansas: the whispering of winds in the wheat fields? Missouri: no longer the bray of the mule, if it ever was? These are highly subjective suggestions. Funny, I can't seem to come up with a proper (to me) sound for Missouri. Probably too close to the forest to see the trees.

I suppose each person, after a little thought, could come up with his own personal flower, bird, rock, animal, etc. But sound? There is so much to choose from -- saxophone crying the blues in the night, robins at morning, rain on the roof.

Maybe sometime some state gatherer of statistics will send out a catalog of Missouri sounds for its citizens to check off and mail back. It might be quicker by the Internet or e-mail. Trouble is so many Missouri sounds would be the same as other states. The mockingbird in Mississippi sounds like the mockingbird in Missouri.

Also, should the states select a sound, methinks it would set off a quarrel lasting as long as the O.J. trial to the tenth power. Maybe forever, if some activist group had nothing more to do than see it was repealed for being against some tree frog's civil rights or insect discrimination. Such is our state of the state of trivialities.

Let's each be content with our own favorite sound or sounds if we can't zero in on one.

Train whistles for me. Especially far-off train whistles in the night. There is a touch of lonesomeness to them, a bit of a wail, yet a determination that says, "Get out of my way, I'm coming through." For most of my life train whistles meant that America was on the move, growing, prospering. That meaning is being overcome now by truck wheels on the highway and jets in the skies. Yet it will be forever one of my favorite sounds.

Mockingbirds. The pure, liquid, sometimes laughing notes. I can almost see their silver shape floating in the nearby air. F sharp, B flat, Middle C, High C and a whole trill of them together that glints in the sunshine or moonshine, makes no difference to the mockingbird when he pours them out.

Cricket song. Soothing, gentle, existing in a pleasant time continuum where urgency, worry, fear is nonexistent.

Bagpipes. Peculiar choice of musical instrument? Yes. There's just something about bagpipe music that alerts my goose bumps. Maybe I attach a lot of the legends of the airy Scottish Highlands to it. Maybe I marvel at its peculiar constructions.

Most assuredly I wonder at what I call its determination and ongoingness. Once the bagpipe gets started, which is never as quick as other instruments, it seems to reach a timing it won't let go of. There are no pauses, no rests. It has to get somewhere, and it does, right to one of my favorite sounds.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.