Lorenzo made a blindfold with his hands so that all was black and led me out the front door to his driveway. It struck me, not for the first time, how quiet it was at his place. All I could hear was birdsong, the buzz of bees, and the dull roar of the ocean in the distance.
One difference between poverty and luxury was decibel level. There were no shouts coming from behind the neighbor’s thin aluminum siding that served as its foundational walls. No grinding down of Jake brakes as the slowing semis passed by on their way to the lumberyard. No dog chained up next door, barking manically at every passerby or imagined intruder.
You could judge the peace of a place by its lack of noise pollution, and I was on edge surrounded by such serenity.
I’d never get used to it.
The sun blinded me fo
