RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THAT NOISE? IT'S EITHER A SICK CAT OR THE DOORBELL

The new doorbell is an electronic marvel that sounds like the latest technology mixed with a terrible mistake.

We have a new doorbell on our front door, thanks to friends who were tired of banging until their knuckles were raw.

While our front door is on the sidewalk level, we actually live on what most folks consider the second floor. Being removed from the main entrance by a long flight of stairs has its advantages. For one thing, we don't get bothered much by unexpected visitors. Another is that we get plenty of exercise going up and down 20 steps (each way).

When our friends gave us the doorbell, I was somewhat reluctant to install it. Not that it was difficult. It's one of those doorbells that uses radio waves or some such, so there was no wiring involved. Not that I'm up on all the latest doorbell technology.

Finally, I put the doorbell on the front door. We put the "ringer" -- actually a cross between a smoke-detector alarm and a child's musical toy -- in the central hallway, thinking we would be able to hear it from any room.

A few days after the new doorbell was put into operation, we heard some strange noises and immediately suspected that the cat had her tail stuck in an electrical outlet. Or some piece of complicated machinery, like the washer or dryer, was letting us know that a huge repair bill was coming our way.

Then we heard loud knocking on the front door. We wondered why whoever it was didn't use the fancy new doorbell.

When I answered the door, it was the friends who gave us the doorbell. I thought: Of all people, they should know to use the new doorbell.

"Didn't you hear the doorbell?" they asked.

With a slightly red face, I realized neither the cat nor the washer was on the blink. We just weren't used to the new doorbell's musical tones.

I don't think doorbells in general are used as much as they once were. Once upon a time, it wasn't uncommon for visitors, salesmen, children in the neighborhood or missionaries to ring the doorbell. Nowadays, I jump when I hear the doorbell, because I wonder who it could be. It's like when the phone rings in the middle of the night. I always expect the worst.

The farmhouse where I grew up on Kelo Valley in the Ozark hills west of here didn't have a doorbell. In the summer, the doors were always open, which meant only the screen doors stood between you and whoever was on the front or back porch.

There were other ways, particularly in the summer, to know when visitors were arriving. One was the billowing cloud of dust that followed any motorized vehicle coming down the gravel road up the valley. At night, in the dark quiet, you could hear the gravel crunching under a car's tires a half-mile away. And if you had dogs, they were sure to start howling before you heard or saw anyone coming.

That cloud of dust, by the way, didn't leave off as a car drove up to the house. No, the gravel dust came right up to the screen door and moseyed on into the house, which is why it was so hard for everyone -- except Clara Hamilton up on Brushy Creek -- to keep their homes dusted in the summer. Clara, on the other hand, always had shiny linoleum floors. My mother never figured out how she managed that.

The gravel dust went all around the house too, leaving a brown layer on all the surrounding foliage. The dust even blanketed the garden, which meant the tomatoes had a nice coating, along with all the other above-ground produce.

I remember that blackberry season coincided with the height of the dust season, that dry spell when spring's moisture is gone and summer's heat is here. The best blackberries, as I recall, were found along gravel roads in fence rows next to fields. Not only did you pick dusty berries, you got a good coating as well every time someone drove by. What with the chiggers and the sweat rolling down your face, what's a little dust?

Some of you remember the Dust Bowl days, when enormous clouds of wind-blown dust from the prairies swept over the area and choked everything in sight. I never saw that, but I've seen dust clouds blowing ahead of a fast-moving thunderstorm, and I've watched the dust in the air turn to falling mud as the rain started in earnest.

Folks who lived through the Dust Bowl had their hands full keeping themselves and their farm animals alive. They fought dust like a handful of ragtag soldiers would battle a tank battalion. It was never a winning situation.

My guess is that in the middle of a dust storm, the last thing on your mind was whether or not the doorbell worked. If you had a doorbell.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.