Since moving into my new place, I’ve had to get used to, shall we say, “the sounds of the city.” At night, as tempted as I was to leave the windows open for the cool night air, I quickly realized that there’s no way I’d ever get to sleep that way.
See, I kinda live on a major thoroughfare in Oakland. Pretty much every night of the week, I can count on a loud, belligerent drunk walking down my street, shouting obscenities to no one in particular. Or a jilted lover (or, y’know, similar) loudly badmouthing that ho what did her wrong. Within a week, I bought a table fan. Needed the background noise.
But the thing that got to me was happening during the day. From somewhere in the neighborhood, there was…a whistling. Every five seconds or so, there was what sounded like the squealing of worn out brake pads. At first, I thought maybe it was one of those rotating vent pods that you find on the roofs of older buildings. I can see a bunch of them from my window, but none of them seem to spin at the same frequency as the whistling. I thought about walking around the neighborhood to look for the source…but what would I do if I found it? Offer to go up to someone’s roof to lube their vent? Ehh…not in this neighborhood.
Then, I thought maybe it was a retarded child in the neighborhood. It really did sound as if a person was just sitting around on a porch, whistling every 3-5 seconds, and only during daylight hours. But, I thought, nah, that just can’t be. What parent would let that happen? I dunno, I never quite dismissed the notion, but I didn’t see it as very likely, either.
I did feel a little better one day, when I parked my car in Berkeley, had my windows rolled down, and I thought I heard the same noise for a minute or two. Made me think it was maybe a type of bird that was nesting somewhere nearby. After that, I just kinda ignored it for a week or so. I did, however, figure out that it was coming from up the street, rather than down the street as I had first guessed. One day, while walking home from the BART station, I clearly heard it coming from a particular street.
About a week after that, I finally found out exactly where the whistling was coming from, and it exceeded all of my expectations for awesomeness. Ladies and gentlemen, the whistling that I hear on my block, every 3-5 seconds of every single day of the week comes from…
Johnie the Watermelon King.
I shit you not.
Johnie (apparently, he’s the king of watermelons) has a small shop down the street. It’s a fenced-in lot with a tiny building the size of an outhouse, and a party tent. Under this tent, on any given day, you will see three or four old black men sitting around a folding table, shootin’ the shit, waitin’ for someone to come along and buy a watermelon. Look a little closer, and you’ll notice that one of these gentlemen, every time he breathes out, contorts his face just a little bit. His jaw juts forward a little bit, his tongue goes up to the roof of his mouth, behind his teeth, and his exhaling breath becomes…a whistle.
At first, I thought, maybe he’s just trying to get people’s attention, so they’ll buy watermelons. Hell, I even thought that maybe he owns the auto shop next door, too…so maybe he’s trying to fool people who stop at the traffic light that they need a brake job. But, alas, he even does it when the gates are closed and he’s just sweeping up in the back.
Either way, I figured I’d at least be happy to finally know. But jesus, how cool is it that it’s coming from the frickin’ watermelon king?
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20031128/ai_n14562279/
attn Matthew Green: you have buried the lede, my man