Looking Up

     At 2:08 yesterday afternoon, the church bell began tolling.  Although we seldom hear its non-mellifluous clang clang clang, it is an eerily familiar sound.  In my mother’s day, its unexpected ring meant FIRE! and everyone came running – the men with their axes, the women with their buckets, the children probably just for the excitement of it all.
     In 1915 there was a chimney fire at our house. Twelve-year-old Sue was dispatched to ring the bell and Mona and Edwin, eleven and five, respectively, were sent running through town calling, “Our house is on fire!”  “Our house is on fire!” so everyone would know for whom the bell tolled (so to speak.)  My mother, who was only three, had no memory of the event, nor did Willard who was just eleven months older than she.
     However, probably the most told and retold family story is about Willard’s behavior on that occasion.  Although he was only four, he was already reading and had begun collecting the ‘funnies’ from the Sunday newspapers.  As soon as the fire was discovered, Willard rescued his precious comics, took them outside onto the porch, lay down full-length on his stomach and became lost in the world of “Maggie and Jiggs” and “The Katzenjammer Kids.”
     The women and older children were just steps away, filling buckets at the pump.  They had to step over him to carry the buckets into the house and up to the attic where the men were valiantly trying to save the roof.  My grandmother knew that trying to get Willard’s attention would take far too long, so she took a moment to pick him up, comics and all, and deposit him over in the lane, out of the way of the ‘fire brigade.’
     In those days, of course, there were still regular church and Sunday school services and, in addition to being used as a fire alarm, the bell was rung regularly to call the faithful to worship.  These days, except under unusual circumstances, the bell is not rung at all.  I think the last time was on the occasion of my mother’s funeral in 2009. 
     The bell rope is looped and tied up at the twelve-foot ceiling level and is clearly intended to be “off limits” to potential bell-ringers.  With upwards of 10,000 visitors to the church each year, the possibility of constant clanging by the well-intended is too daunting to think about.
     So, when the silence of the afternoon was disrupted by the old bell’s clang, both Nyel and I rushed out of the house to see if there was a ‘problem.’  Before we reached the church, however, out came an attractive young couple.  The man was one of the tallest I had ever seen off a basketball court – six-seven or eight, I’d say.  Obviously, he had reached to rope with ease.  When we explained that the church bell had once served as the village alarm, he apologized profusely. “It won’t happen again,” he said.
     Probably not for awhile, anyway…