Too Much Noise or How Many Street Signs Do We Need?

I have a picture book called "Too Much Noise" by Ann McGovern.  I have had it for years.  I must have bought it way back in college as I was preparing to be a teacher.  I read it to so many of my preschool classes.  It has always been one of my favorites.  And as such, the children would ask to hear it over and over.  They can always tell the books we love the most.  These are the ones that we read to them with excitement and energy.

Well, I was thinking about this book this morning.  In the story there is this man who hears all of these horrible noises in his house, his tea kettle whistles, his bed creaks, the floor squeaks, and the leaves outside - oh, such noises.  So he decides to do something about this.  He goes to the wise man for advice.  The wise man tells him to get a cow.  He is unsure how this will help but he goes out and gets a cow.  The cow then just adds to the noises in this man's house.  It Moo's all day long.  So he goes back to the wise man.  Get a donkey says the wise man.  This goes on and on, until the man's house is full of animals.  By now there are so many animals making noise in his house that he is very very angry.  He returns to the wise man for the last time.  He is just yelling at him about all of the noise in the house.  Now the wise man remains completely calm.  He quietly tells him to "Do as I say.  Let the cow go..."  And on down the entire list of animals.  So the man does this.  Then he is sitting in his house.  He hears the bed creak, the floor squeak, the tea kettle whistle, and the leaves on the roof.  "Oh.  Ah.  Such quiet noises."

So in the end the very things that he felt were unbearable were relaxing and calm.

I don't know if these things will be related to anyone else but to me they were this morning.

I had been thinking about signs; road sign, street signs, signs we follow in our life.  Where I live street signs are pretty new.  Most of my life we didn't have them.  We either just had to know where we were going or use some landmarks.

How to get to my house:
Turn west on the mile south of Worms.  It is the last mailbox (mailbox...because you can't see the house from the road) on the south side of the road.
Or.
Turn west on the mile north of the big red barn.  It is the last mailbox on the south side of the road.

Some roads had names, but they were only known by word of mouth.  And these roads were usually the only roads that were paved.  Once you got off of the paved roads you had to just know the way.  The funny thing is that I still tend to drive this way.  If someone would give me an address to a place in one of the towns nearby I will likely not know where it is.  I didn't bother learning the names of the streets.  I got to places by memory.  "Grandma's block"  "Or just past the hospital"  I suppose this could be because I grew up in the country with no street signs.  But it has taken years for me to get used to and learn the street names.

Now though, I am quite good at looking up on Google maps anything or anyplace that I need to go.  I depend on the signs to show me the way.  I printout or memorize the path before I leave my house.  I focus now on those words on the green signs, ignoring the big red barn or giant windbreak that used to guide my path.  I no longer need to count the intersections or mile roads to know that I am in the right place.  In some ways I think it might have made me lazy.

So this morning I was thinking about a different kind of sign.  But I believe some of these thoughts carry through here for me as well.   I expect the path to be clear.  I expect there to be signs for me to follow.  But there are billboards, neon flashing signs, business signs, construction signs, signs everywhere.  Just like in the story, there is just too much noise.  Maybe it is time for me to stop looking for the signs all around me.  Maybe I just need to find the big red barn.  Slow down and enjoy the journey.

And really did I need to get to that place anyhow?  I just had an amazing thought.  When I was a little girl, my Grandpa and I drove around quite a few times looking for Cook-coo-wiches.  He would put me in the car, and we would drive out on one of those un-named gravel roads.  We would turn several places and go up and down a few miles.  We never actually 'found' cook-coo-wiches.  But those were some of my very favorite trips and it had nothing to do with the ice cream cone that my Grandpa bought me when we finally gave up and decided to go home.