Musings from Brian J. Noggle

One of the most evocative things about living in the country, at least for a guy who was pretty much a city boy up until the end of September 2009, are the animal sounds you hear in the nighttime that you cannot identify.

I recognize the sounds of the horses, cattle, chickens, and donkeys from the barns and fields. I know a number of bird cries from crows to hawks to whatever it is that seems to call Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy. But sometimes I hear things I don’t recognize, and most of the time I hear them at night.

The first night I spent in the house, I reached it after watching the movers load the truck in St. Louis and an afternoon drive down to Springfield. I led my wife to it so she could see it a second time–she’d seen it just once, when we initially looked at it, and I was the one present for all inspections thereafter. So we walked through the empty house together so she could see what we’d wrought, and as I walked her into the near-complete blackness to her truck, I heard something just outside the circle of the porch light.

I’d like to describe it for you, but I find it hard to characterize it. Given the height, it was coming from the trees, so I expect it was a nocturnal bird, perhaps one of those screeching birds. But it might have been a vacationing Jersey Devil for all I know. I didn’t, and that’s what made me uncomfortable.

Then, Saturday morning at 4am, my wife and I were awakened by a high, canine packish sound from outside. Sometimes, the wind whistling around our skylight can make sounds like low children moans or whistle like a maelstrom. The sound didn’t come from the skylight. I looked out a couple windows to try to catch sight of the source, to see if it was a pack of wild dogs or, heaven forfend, actual wolves.

As an aside, when I lived in Jefferson County, we had a pack of wild dogs that roamed the valley in which we lived. They were lost and abandoned pet dogs, so there was a mixture of mutts, none of which topped 80 pounds. It’s hard to be scared of a bunch of feral Yorkies, but one could be in a bit of trouble if a bunch of 80 pound and smaller dogs take you on.

I didn’t see what was wandering outside our house on Saturday morning. I’m uncomfortable in my ignorance. And believe you me, I sweep my eyes from side to side as I drag my garbage cart forty yards down my driveway into the blackness and wonder what lies out there that I don’t know about.

Imagination and ignorance makes life exciting!

So I pull into a regular gas station of mine, swipe my new American Express Card, start filling the SUV full of boys with 87 ‘tane, and start washing salt off of the windows. Why the windows are salty here in Springfield, where most places didn’t treat nor plow the 6 inches of snow we got around Christmas, I don’t grok. But that’s not the head scratcher.

After I finish with the back window and then the front window, less of a priority because it has better internal salt removal systems, I figure that the half tank’s worth of pumping should be done. The pump is not actively forcing fuel into my vehicle, and its internal mechanisms have shut it off at five cents’ worth of gas. .021 gallons, if you’re wondering.

I figure the seal between the pump nozzle and the tank has triggered. My pickup truck has a faulty seal here so that I have to pump gas by hand at slower than the lowest automatic notch or it will trigger the nozzle shut off. So I’m familiar with the vagaries of these systems. But when I depress the nozzle trigger, it does not pump at all.

So I wonder, is the gas station’s tank empty? Or has it stopped because that’s all my credit card authorized me? I push the help button that should intercom to the cashier inside to ask him what was going on.

No response. I’d have gone in, but that would have required unloading a pair of boisterons (the physics term for energetic male children) to ask a 30 second question or to leave them for 30 seconds unattended in a car, which is felony child endangerment in 21st century America.

So I instead replace the nozzle, take my receipt for five cents, and swipe my credit card again. This time, the pump says that it cannot accommodate credit card swipes at this time. The gas station attendant hasn’t replied yet, so I take my nickel of gasoline and leave.

Wondering, of course, what happened. Credit card problem? Computer problem? Or some problem with my newish credit card, perhaps a fraud alert. Maybe there’s an APB out for me in Battlefield, Missouri, even as we speak as they search for the three desperadoes in a vehicle that’s safely hidden in a garage.

Whatever else it is, it give me something to think about and to ruminate upon all afternoon.

When I’m turning left like a bouncy-strided NASCAR driver on the track in the local YMCA, I’m not one to steal a glimpse of the women in their workout clothes. Not that I would admit on a blog my wife reads from time to time, anyway. One thing turns my head every time, though: a metal door marked YMCA Staff Only opened to reveal the workshop within.

Beyond that door lies more than a janitorial closet, although certain supplies are stashed within for easy access on the second floor. In addition to those supplies, the shelves contain various and sundry implements to perform the most basic of repairs throughout the facility and upon some of the machines within. Then my long limbs carry me beyond the doorway.

There’s something about a professional workshop that triggers a certain wistfulness within me. Upon each professional’s bench, implements and tools relevant to the job at hand lie within reach according to a logic and preference to the guy doing the job. He’s got the screwdrivers arranged as he uses them and the lead mallet on a shelf where he can grab it on his way to the end of the printing press to pound the empty paper roll from its roller. When I see the workspace, I can almost see myself doing the job, and in that moment, I slightly transcend myself.

I don’t get that sense in an office environment. If you’ve seen one cubicle, you’ve seen them all. Most of the customization from one job to another involves a different desktop wallpaper and set of applications installed upon a computer. A different set of binders on the bookshelf, if any. A different set of photographs or cutesy individual touches.

But workbenches, they have different tools and different things. I’ve worked enough different non-office environments that my different workspaces had a variety of implements. My produce back room had machete-like blades for splitting watermelon, knives for trimming ears of corn, Styrofoam trays for packaging product, and a toolbox containing numbers and signs for pricing. My art store shipping and receiving station had a tape gun for closing boxes, sundry pens for counting products, and trays for packing lists. My print shop workbench contained two bottles of highly caustic cleaners, numerous cans of differently colored soy-based ink, screwdrivers for adjusting wheels and for unlocking plates, and the aforementioned lead mallet along with a poem hanging on the file cabinet for me to memorize for my open mic nights.

Maybe my fascination with workbenches stems from my desire for a lost youth where I worked these jobs and marched ever higher in positions and placements until I broke the barrier into business casual and a career. Maybe I long for those olden days when I made something or moved some physical things every day.

Or, just maybe, they continue to trip my imagination in ways that office-based careers and their environments cannot.