Horns

As I was returning from church Sunday morning after worship service, I passed a friend who was walking outside of his home. I tooted my horn. It’s often customary for neighbors from the “mountains” to say that you saw them and just wanted to say “hi.” It was the first time I’ve blown my horn since I bought a new car over a month ago. The horn sounded harsh to me, but then again most horns were to be created to be a warning and not as a friendly greeting.

Maybe it’s just me, but horns of yesterday sounded much different. If we go back to the time of the steam whistle, they seemed loud, but when a train or ship sounded in the distance, it was muted, sounding so nostalgic. In bed late at night a train would pass nearby. Its whistle would float through the open bedroom window softly saying goodnight. Even the newer diesel horns seemed to lose their sharpness in the night air. Steamboat captains whose sternwheelers and tugboats that plied the rivers around Pittsburgh were known by their whistles. If you recognized the whistle, you knew the captain. If he changed boats, the whistle and the cook moved too.

When automobiles were invented the first ones were steam driven and whistles remained. They were smaller and perhaps a bit more shrill, but they still sounded like a person or a bird whistling. When people invented vehicles and chugging gasoline motors, their first horns were bulbs which honked when squeezed, sounding very much like a distressed Canadian goose. Bulb horns were replaced by electrical ones that vibrated to make their sounds. The variety was nearly endless and depended on the size and shape of the trumpet. Their sounds ranged from a barely heard buzz or beep to the vintage “Aah-Ooo-Gah” of yesteryear.

Trucks had a need for larger and louder horns. Some were electronic, but many were equipped with air horns. A blast from the trucker warned others that they were coming, causing pedestrians and other drivers to scoot out of the way. Even those horns had a different, less harsh and threatening sound to them. Some of the air horns of truckers, even pickup drivers, actually played a series of notes, sounding out a recognizable tune. “Dixie” seemed to be one of the favorite refrains on their hit list.