Sleeping in rural America

It’s the time of year where I used to spend quite a bit of time in hotels rather than at home…nights where you lay in bed thinking. I prefer open windows rather than the jet engin—air conditioning especially if the temps are in the 60s/

But when you are in a city, midnight is nowhere near as quiet as a town of a few hundred, the squeal of car tires–probably guys trying to look impressive for some reason. Ditto the unmuffled sounds of Harleys around 1-2am after the bars closed…and of course, other residents forgetting they are basically in a public building–for instance, the couple who decided that was a good night to have a running fight in the hallway and then taking it outside to carry on…she was pretty upset, using the logic “I let you get me pregnant four times”…not sure that’s good logic for a relationship.

The weird thing…a lot of the time, all that noise reminded me of childhood and being home in Davenport. Our house was cattycorner from the Mercy Hospital Emergency Room entrance and in the old days, there were no regulations about ambulance sirens blaring at night–so if there was an accident, there’d be sirens at random points in the night. In good weather (APR-OCT), once the bars down by the river closed–you’d get the Harleys roaring up the street. If it wasn’t Harleys, it was sports cars–using the Marquette/Lombard light to drag race. It was easy to sleep through it all–it was moving to rural America that was challenging, where it was much quieter, where you get the late night car streaking down the county road (with the occupants throwing empty beer cans into yards/ditches), but not nightly. The consistent noise are the trains on the other side of town going through at regular hours and in winter/once crops are gone, the interstate traffic to the east.

And somewhere, I got used to the quiet. Now, too much noise keeps me from sleeping well, a complete reversal of the first half of my life. Weird.