Jewel's Box Fan

Sounds of Summer.

hello Grandma.

I recently heard a few essays about summer sounds, so, as my neighbors mowed their lawns and power washed their decks and employed every noisy tool imaginable to beautify their weekend, I drifted, with the aide of a breeze whispering in the maple leaves, to a cherished memory, a cornerstone of my past, the sound of a big box fan on my Grandmother’s porch, down in St. Pete Beach.

You could sit on this fan. 

It had three speeds, plenty of torque, and it was fun to talk thru on the laziest of days. It seemed to funnel all the sounds of summertime into Jewel Gilbert’s tiny cottage.

The summers in St. Pete are still as hot and humid as ever. And, as anywhere down south in 1963, the only air conditioning was found inside dairy cases at the grocery store, or heaven forbid, spilling out of the fridge. Everyone had fans plugged in. Grandma’s fan worked day and night, on the porch, in the hall, near the kitchen, maybe 20 hours or so, resting only after my brother Bob and I woke up and Grandma shut it off for a few cool, noiseless hours.

The motor’s all-night drone tugged in soft humid air and a curious sonic landscape; the occasional gust rattling stiff palm fronds. Pampas grass scratching, swaying to mysterious swirls of air. Window screens clacking, inhaling and exhaling conflicted air that flutters and slaps. 

Challenged by a midnight back-breeze before a quick tropical shower, the Emerson motor moans. Two minutes of cool rain steams everything and fills the house with the smell of musty asphalt and sweet grass. Then dawn’s subtle Dove is cooing us out of dreamtime. Skinks scurry up the coconut. The fan gathers a gull’s laughing, escalating Tarzan call, informing all to good trashcan pickings behind the garbage truck working Gulf Boulevard.

But it was usually the lazy caw of a few crows perched in the sea pines and the distant sound of a tin-clinking exhaust plate, flapping on top of the old ford tractor raking the beach, that got my brother and I up and out of our pj’s. That was the benchmark sound sucked into our bedroom by that fan. It was our daily call to action; pull on stiff, salty, swim trunks from the clothesline and run to the Gulf to see what the low tide had uncovered.

Cool, fine sand between the toes is still a better wake-up than the smell of coffee today, and I’m a coffee snob. So dashing down 44th Ave to the Gulf of Mexico where a sugar white beach and scurrying crabs await our tiny feet was total bliss greeting each and every day. We’d race down the boardwalk lined by sea oats, “First gear, it’s all right. Second gear, Lean right.” Our jets cool as soon as we land in the sand. “Yeah Baby!”

Like commandos behind enemy lines, we’d scan for the tractor’s whereabouts, and look for anything unusual, like a battleship, battling Godzilla on the horizon, and then we'd bound for the water. Slow, deliberate emergence. Toes and then ankles, the morning’s quest began by walking the sandy ridges in the clear shallow tide pools, sneaking closer to schools of killifish and frantic, probing, sand pipers. The tide creeping in with short rolling laps, mini curls uncovering coquinas and darters. The yawning gulf stretched and muffled the drone of the clinky tractor with short slaps of saltwater, up and down the beach. 

It was living surround-sound stereo.

And as we’d venture like Jacque Cousteau, bellybutton deep, a few arching dolphins, friends of Flipper maybe, meander south from St. Johns Pass. Then pelicans gliding inches from the surface cruise northward from the Pass-A-Grill inlet, stealing all attention. Hundreds of tiny silversides ripple the surface and jump, fleeing the formation of bomber-sized birds. And then the abrupt, headfirst dives; rapid succession of exploding splashes; ka-blish, ka-blash, kaa-blooosh. Drastic as the pelican’s dive is, the all-out power-flapping paddle-pushing employed by these flying boats to get airborne and resume their patrol is mesmerizing. And off they go, climbing and descending, weaving and peeling and power gliding, wingtips on water’s edge, chasing eddies and sub-surface schools of shifty silversides, looking for the bigger meal below.

The soft, still water and sea hunt kept us focused until the sun shortened our shadows and bellies grumbled for breakfast. So, bright-eyed, alert, and back to Grandma's for the best bacon, eggs, and biscuits any kid could ever imagine.

“Wash your feeties, sweeties,” hails from the aluminum recliner inside the screened porch.

The hot rubbery hose is turned on.

It flows onto searing concrete pavers until it is cold enough to rinse off the salty, crusty residue from tootsie toes. We obey Grandma Jewel’s prime directive; keep as much sand outside her home as possible. And having done so, clean feet greet cool porch and march to the bathroom to wash up before eating.

Dodging past her trusty box fan, steadfast in station, it is again humming its daylong song. And awaiting its lunchtime employment from little cousin Donnie, who’ll broadcast through its whirlwind politely, petitioning the kitchen, “Grandma, May I have another ham, mustard, mayonnaise and sweetpickle sandwich, please?"

And so too is my box fan, steadfast at the foot of the hammock, humming on the back porch. Soon it will be politely employed to broadcast a request to my wife.

Her response is usually a laugh, and, "While you're at it, get me a beer too!"