For Whom the Bell Tolls



Photo from Google Images

 On my way to find portabella mushrooms and a bottle of wine for a surprise dinner for Mr. Pearson, I found myself at an intersection waiting for the light to change when the sound of church bells drifted over the car.  It was 3pm and the bells of a nearby church were announcing the hour. (click on these links throughout the blog to hear some lovely bells)  The sound caught me by surprise and made me wonder how many actual church bells and clock chimes were still ringing across the world these days. Many, I hope.

Photo from Google Images

I have only a handful of memories of bells.  We had a bell  at the farm that Mum had unearthed from who knows where, perhaps from the hulking ark of the barn where so many moldy treasures lived out their last forgotten days.  It hung from a bracket outside the door to the ell.  I think only my Uncle Miles and my friend Brent ever rang it and that was mostly as an introduction to something quite silly that they would then say or do.



Winchester Cathedral  (Photo from Google Images)



My months in Winchester, England, as an exchange student at King Alfred’s College came and went with the ringing of the bells at Winchester Cathedral.  The first time I heard them from our rooms just a block from the cathedral I was filled with that sort of joy that erupts when something you have read about or seen in movies actually happens to you.  I was in England, I was in Winchester and the cathedral bells  were ringing on a Sunday morning in August. A few months later I was in London in a red phone box, looking up at Big Ben while excitedly dialing the long international number to the farm back in Maine.  No one was home to take the call and hear the famous sound around me.

Gram Mallory, my mother’s mum, had a grandmother clock that rang Westminster Chimes on the quarter hour.  The clock had to be wound every few days.  Gram kept the keys on a piece of string in a tiny drawer in the kitchen.  When she went into the nursing home, Uncle Miles, who lived with her, couldn’t find the keys anywhere. The clock sat silent near Gram’s little library no longer ticking down the days of its mistress’s life. 



Harold Sutherland of Sutherland Auctions

 The clock was given to me but as we had no way to wind it, I didn’t hurry to get it moved from Scarborough to Pownal.  Sadly, when Uncle Miles died suddenly, the contents of the house were put up for auction according to the will for the estate.  In an odd twist of fate, the clock and everything else in the house that had not been squirreled away by relatives with keys to Gram’s ended up in an auction hall in North Yarmouth just miles from my home.  I would often go for an hour or two of deals and laughter on those Thursday nights and it wasn’t until I picked up an odd lots box and found a grade school photograph of my brother that I realized what filled the hall.  For the next few hours I watched item after item of my childhood bid on and taken away.  I had enough cash on me to buy a little chest of drawers but the clock went for far over my funds.  The next day I called my Mum in Florida and told her what had happened. As far as we could tell, no one in the family had been told where and when the auction would be held.



Jamie ringing the bell for us

 

To be sure the happiest bells of my life reside at Chapel Dulcinea, in Driftwood, Texas, where Jamie and I were married.  It was one bell, actually, and it is a request from the benefactor of the chapel that all who marry there ring the chapel bell at the end of their ceremony. Our wedding was at sunset with a nearly full moon looking down upon us. Jamie reached high for the rope-thank goodness he is tall! The peal of the bell spread over the  

cedars and stony soil of the hill country valley below us.  What a beautiful night.

 Without a doubt the saddest bell thus far in my life was the mournful toll of the chapel bell at the Maine Veterans Cemetery at the conclusion of Dad’s funeral service.  It was the final sound after the lonesome notes of “Taps” from the bugler’s horn.  A solemn reverberation.  We drove to Belfast after the service looking for some food and distraction.  Stepping out of the car, I could hear a buoy bell on the Penobscot tolling through the fog.


Belfast Harbor   (Photo from Google Images)



(It seems no small feat in these days of constant, plugged-in noise that something as simple as a bell or a chime can still capture our attention. If you find yourself wanting a beautiful bell of your own, I highly recommend US Bells, in Prospect Harbor, Maine. They are exquisite works of art and sound. All videos in this post come from YouTube and various websites and contain sounds similar to the bells mentioned.)