Dear Editor
I've said no more toilet paper jokes, but the following incident actually happened in, I think, the 1930s.
Our neighbour to the east hitched up a team of horses to haul a load of grain to Waseca. In those days and for years after, the country women would phone their grocery list in to the store then whoever had gone to town would pay for them and pick them up.
Nancy gave Joe the list. I expect she later wished he had phoned in her list, for when Joe eventually arrived home she stared in amazement to see her husband unloading rolls of tar paper.
When she made up her list she had put in an abbreviation for toilet paper: Tpaper.
Yes, you might wonder why Joe didn't wonder why his wife wanted tar paper.
It became just one more local story people enjoyed telling; my mother was one of them.
Maybe it was normal for Joe to live in a world of his own.
What is normal, anyway? It is just what we become used to in our lives and humans can get used to anything, good or bad.
Perhaps more people now have become used to the beauty of silence, by that I mean good silence. People in over-developed countries have come to accept noise as normal.
I haven't been to a movie theatre for years, but I decided to go to The King's Speech and that was several years ago. When the sound came on I felt as though I was plastered by it to the back of my seat. I stuffed tissue in my ears. It didn't help. I've never been back to a movie. I doubt if I'm missing anything. So many movies now consist of special effects that generally hide the fact the people can't act.
When did people begin to accept the fact that bands would have every instrument amplified?
A number of years ago a family hired a band to play at the wedding dance for a young couple. As soon as they hit the stage the band members cranked up the sound.
The father of the bride went to the stage and asked the players to shut off the amps, stating that none of the guests could hear one another, they couldn't visit. The sound was lowered.
Soon, however, it was turned up and up.
The father of the bride was a hard-bitten cattleman. Back he went to the band. He told them bluntly that if they didn't turn down the noise level they could pack up and leave without being paid.
The racket was turned down and not turned up again.
Money talks louder than amplifiers.
I remember an interview given by the Beatles in which they expressed their disgust when they toured the United States. The audience kept screaming, whistling and shouting. They couldn't hear the music. The Beatles couldn't hear it themselves.
The audience had come not to hear them, they explained, but for themselves to be seen and heard.
No wonder people now lose their hearing at an early age. Why have they let themselves think that constant noise is normal? I suppose it is expecting too much that people will come to their senses and not punish again the precious sense of hearing. I don't hold much hope, however.
After all, people have become used to hearing (or saying), "Like I mean you know and stuff, Right?"
To which is now added "going forward."
I don't want to accept that as normal.
Christine Pike
Waseca
