Speaker 1: Hollo, I'm moalcan stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Every Thursday at the Rosewood Recreation Center we hold Trivia
Speaker 2: Night in the old multi purpose hall. I come early, soft,
Speaker 2: will pull over, and my mailmen know where it's at.
Speaker 2: Cap in hand, because Eveling claims a good seat is
Speaker 2: half the game. The eight foot folding tables are arranged
Speaker 2: in crooked rows, pictures of lemonade frosting up in the middle,
Speaker 2: pencils in stubby jars. Most folks here are well into retirement,
Speaker 2: some like me, through with the business of work, some
Speaker 2: who never stopped volunteering. Tonight, the place is noisy with greetings,
Speaker 2: that light friction of local gossip, and the careful scrawls
Speaker 2: of our team names on the answer slips. It always
Speaker 2: starts the same. Marcus reads the first round, everyone laughs
Speaker 2: at each other's wrong guesses. Lydia hands out napkins. Then,
Speaker 2: as the scores are tallied, a hush for gentle and companionable.
Speaker 2: It's during these lulls that it happens. One person, sometimes Eveling,
Speaker 2: sometimes someone across the room, Gregg from car club or
Speaker 2: a Vonn from city council. Whispers a tune. The humming
Speaker 2: is soft, almost automatic, rising unbidden. Another picks it up.
Speaker 2: As the first stops, someone else takes over, as if
Speaker 2: passing a subtle bat on. I can't place the song.
Speaker 2: It's lovely, soothing, familiar in the way a favorite blanket
Speaker 2: is familiar, but with no edge or ornament I can recall.
Speaker 2: I try games with myself. Is it an old radio jingle,
Speaker 2: an anthem from some long ago parade. Sometimes I think
Speaker 2: it wants to be a lullaby, or maybe one of
Speaker 2: those processional pieces the high school band played, But the
Speaker 2: melody shimmers away before I can pin it down. What
Speaker 2: lingers is the odd continuity. Every time one hum fades,
Speaker 2: another picks up near by. The tune never overlaps, never
Speaker 2: quite repeats, as if the sound walks quietly from person
Speaker 2: to person. There's no self consciousness in it. No one
Speaker 2: seems to notice except me, at least not in any
Speaker 2: way they'd remark on. When I try to hum it
Speaker 2: myself deliberately, deliberately, I get the shape, but not the sound.
Speaker 2: It slips out of my memory even as I concentrate.
Speaker 2: This small shared tune shouldn't trouble me, But to night
Speaker 2: after we lose our third lightning round and Marcus is
Speaker 2: off reading aloud the scores. I resolve I will ask
Speaker 2: someone about it. My mouth opens to form the first
Speaker 2: few notes to reconstruct the melody, but the effort stalls.
Speaker 2: The sound evaporates. As soon as I try to reproduce it.
Speaker 2: I squeeze my pencil and make a silent promise next break,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to the bottom of this, or
Speaker 2: at least i'll try. When I look around, the humming
Speaker 2: has resumed, and I suddenly feel, just for a moment,
Speaker 2: as if I'm the only one noticing an invisible thread
Speaker 2: drawing us all together. I suppose that's the habit of
Speaker 2: a lifelong postal worker. You spend years noticing small things.
Speaker 2: A peculiar stamp, the weight of a package that feels
Speaker 2: a little too light, the way missus Enngel always writes
Speaker 2: her return address at the exact same funny tilt. Even
Speaker 2: in retirement, I hung up my royal mail bag three
Speaker 2: years ago this March. I think I still sought and
Speaker 2: sequenced the world by these little details. I have more
Speaker 2: hours to do it now. Rosewood, the town I never
Speaker 2: really meant to stay in forever has become the kind
Speaker 2: of place I'd puzzle over even if it weren't home.
Speaker 2: Rosewood is not large, twelve thousand at last census, if
Speaker 2: you count the colicky horses at the Hella Farm. The
Speaker 2: streets are quilted, with sycamores and old oaks leaning over
Speaker 2: brick bungalows. There's the Depot, of course, now an uncreaky
Speaker 2: museum that once was the rail hub for half this
Speaker 2: side of the state. There's the old bakery, where Lydia
Speaker 2: sits behind her counter in the afternoons, sugar dust in
Speaker 2: her hair, serving slices and stories both life here is
Speaker 2: a loop of gentle ritual. My own is simple. For
Speaker 2: over three decades, rain or summer dust, I carried letters
Speaker 2: and lives along the same east west route Depot to
Speaker 2: park Park, to old paper mill and every stoop in between.
Speaker 2: Nowadays I walk those streets post lunch, not a bag
Speaker 2: in sight, enjoying the sense of continuity that only small
Speaker 2: towns seem to stretch across generations. People notice things in
Speaker 2: places like Rosewood. I'm not alone in that. Evelin, who
Speaker 2: anchors my trivia team most weeks, is sharp as attack
Speaker 2: and always correcting my misremembered TV themes she did years
Speaker 2: as the school music teacher, and still strums a battered
Speaker 2: guitar at the rec center's singalongs. Mister Connolly, whom every
Speaker 2: one calls the station master, even though the train stopped
Speaker 2: running before I got my pension, seems to hold every
Speaker 2: detail of Rosewood's history like puzzle pieces in his pockets.
Speaker 2: There's Lydia of the bakery and the never properly hot coffee,
Speaker 2: whose voice carries down Main Street when she gets started
Speaker 2: chatting with customers. And then there's Marcus, a little younger,
Speaker 2: the djay at the town's mostly oldies radio station, newish
Speaker 2: enough that folks still call him the Boston Boy, though
Speaker 2: he's lived here seven years. All of us, consciously or not,
Speaker 2: participate in the fabric. Tuesdays it's the radio club, veterans
Speaker 2: and retarees fiddling with ham sets and reminiscing over the
Speaker 2: seventies static. Thursdays it's trivia Night. Saturdays, church bake sale
Speaker 2: schedule seem to organize half the week in advance. No
Speaker 2: calendar mark is too small, Birthdays, memorial potlucks, even the
Speaker 2: celebration of the anniversary of the depot s last true
Speaker 2: midnight train. In so many ways, Rosewood is a memory machine,
Speaker 2: a community built on remembering itself. Still, even here, something
Speaker 2: is shifting. There's a quality to the conversations in the
Speaker 2: rec center lately, a kind of heightened warmth edged with nostalgia,
Speaker 2: as if we all sense time changing its gait, or
Speaker 2: as if we're each searching backward for something known, half lost.
Speaker 2: We talk more and more about the how and the
Speaker 2: who that came before. If you're paying attention, it's in
Speaker 2: the way folks linger at the bulletin board, the way
Speaker 2: the annual Depot festival speeches get longer. Maybe this is
Speaker 2: what happens when a town has more memories than ambitions left.
Speaker 2: This is why the humming bothers me. It's both as
Speaker 2: ordinary as weather and as peculiar as a hidden current
Speaker 2: in a familiar stream. After that trivia night, I feel
Speaker 2: a private sort of charge, some vestigial curiosity that used
Speaker 2: to serve me on mail routes. Now a dog quietly
Speaker 2: worrying a bone. It's never just a tune. It's a signal,
Speaker 2: a sign. Even before I can articulate why, I know
Speaker 2: I'll return with questions next Thursday, Before the second round
Speaker 2: of trivia. I corner Evelin by the snack tables, triangle
Speaker 2: cut cheese sandwiches her handiwork. She's humming, barely audible, chin dipped.
Speaker 2: When I ask, what is that tune? I keep hearing it,
Speaker 2: but I can't seem to place it. She laughs, an
Speaker 2: easy and familiar sound. Oh, that old thing. I wouldn't worry,
Speaker 2: she says, flicking a napkin into the bin. It's just
Speaker 2: what people hum around here. I think it's always been
Speaker 2: in the air. Don't you hum it too? I might,
Speaker 2: but I honestly couldn't start it if you paid me.
Speaker 2: What's it called? I press? It's not any song I know.
Speaker 2: Evelyn shrugs her hands, finding a rhythm as if she
Speaker 2: might coax the tune into being, but nothing comes. She frowns. Funny,
Speaker 2: I thought I knew it, but I can't get it
Speaker 2: going unless it's already well, you know, the way you
Speaker 2: pick up a laugh in a crowd. Never alone. Mister
Speaker 2: Connolly looms beside us with his usual mug tea not
Speaker 2: coffee for his nerves. When I ask if he remembers
Speaker 2: any one teaching the melody, he looks mildly alarmed. He's
Speaker 2: used to being the towns are answer man. My father
Speaker 2: hummed it in the evenings. I think he'd sit on
Speaker 2: the porch after dinner, tap the rails of the chair
Speaker 2: that sort of do do do thing. He moves his
Speaker 2: hand in a looping gesture. Or maybe it was my mother.
Speaker 2: Hard to say. I always thought it came from the
Speaker 2: old a M radio, you know, after the news and
Speaker 2: before the weather. But or was that some church hymn?
Speaker 2: He winks, as if noticing his own confusion. It's always
Speaker 2: just been there, I suppose, I suppose isn't an answer.
Speaker 2: I tease, but he only offers a knowing professional evasiveness,
Speaker 2: someone practiced in the gentle art of rendering mystery comfortable.
Speaker 2: I find Marcus leaning against the rec center's portable speaker,
Speaker 2: scrolling the next music round. Hey Marcus, do you know
Speaker 2: what people keep humming in here? I ask? None of
Speaker 2: us can pin it down? He laughs, You notice that too,
Speaker 2: I get callers whistling it at the station. Drives me
Speaker 2: a bit batty, Honestly. I even ran software our play logs,
Speaker 2: but no track matches. It's like it's everywhere here but
Speaker 2: not recorded anywhere at least know where I've found. I
Speaker 2: try to provoke them, give me the first four bars,
Speaker 2: or sing a line, any line. Marcus makes a game attempt,
Speaker 2: opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish, then waves
Speaker 2: it off. Weird. I have it in my head until
Speaker 2: you ask. You put me on the spot. Puff. He
Speaker 2: shrugs and rubs his eyebrow with the corner of a
Speaker 2: playlist sheet. Evelyn tries next. It's never the same twice,
Speaker 2: is it? She observes, biting lower lip. It's more like
Speaker 2: a flavor than a tune. There's that little twist on
Speaker 2: the end. She whistles a phrase but dissolves into laughter.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere, but no one owns it. I find that
Speaker 2: detail both comforting and exasperating. Later, with the game ending,
Speaker 2: Marcus spins some faint background music, and there it is
Speaker 2: a gentle tide of humming, surfacing, and sinking as people
Speaker 2: chat and collect their bags. I watch maybe half a
Speaker 2: dozen spread across three generations, each catching the melody in
Speaker 2: passing as if linked by a thread no one can see.
Speaker 2: I ride that puzzle home, rolling the thought in my
Speaker 2: mind as I once did. The mail up the depot
Speaker 2: ramp on snow bright mornings, so I treat this humming
Speaker 2: as postal work, a small, steady curiosity worth following from
Speaker 2: one porch to another. The bakery is first on my
Speaker 2: private investigative route. Lydia's front window is steamy from the
Speaker 2: early morning batch of cinnamon rolls, the glass propped with
Speaker 2: a sign reading slices by the smile. Inside, Lydia herself
Speaker 2: presides over her pastry kingdom, short and fair haired, hands
Speaker 2: always dusted in flour and sugar. She's speaking with a
Speaker 2: knot of regulars. The morning's gossip a little quieter than usual.
Speaker 2: There it is the humming again. Isaac, the pharmacist's son,
Speaker 2: waits in line with two children in tow, and he's
Speaker 2: humming that phrase patches of melody, never a full verse,
Speaker 2: but just enough to be unmistakable, or at least to
Speaker 2: evoke what's already missing from my memory. Behind him a
Speaker 2: man I barely know the furniture. A finisher from the
Speaker 2: next town over whistles the same rising motif, only to
Speaker 2: abandon it midphrase, as Lydia laughs at something on the radio.
Speaker 2: When it's my turn, Lydia bags up two turnovers and
Speaker 2: leans across the counter, voice lowered funny thing. I notice
Speaker 2: myself doing it just now. She confides that humming never
Speaker 2: noticed before. My aunt always did it too, when she
Speaker 2: ran this place. She looks momentarily unsettled. I thought she
Speaker 2: brought it with her from oh somewhere east, But folks
Speaker 2: say it's always been around. She waves off the thought.
Speaker 2: Doesn't every one hum something now? And then? Maybe it's
Speaker 2: a habit. She changes the subject before I can push further.
Speaker 2: But I scribble a note in my pocket notebook anyway,
Speaker 2: bakery humming court pattern unclear Lydia claims started after Aunt
Speaker 2: took over. I catch the town bus next, an afternoon
Speaker 2: errand to the north side Hardware. Marcus happens to climb
Speaker 2: aboard too, earphones slotted round his neck, looking over a
Speaker 2: courier envelope. As we jolt away from Main Street. The
Speaker 2: bus driver, a beefy man with a voice like a foghorn,
Speaker 2: belts out a crooked tune into the empty afternoon, humming
Speaker 2: as he slows for each bump. I strained to catch it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing I'd know, but the contour matches that mystery
Speaker 2: melody two seats up. A couple of older women quietly
Speaker 2: blend their own fragments out of sink, two threads tangled
Speaker 2: but never clashing. Marcus nudges me and, sporting a private smile, says,
Speaker 2: I swear every new arrival gets the bug inside a
Speaker 2: month I did. At first, you don't even notice. Then
Speaker 2: one morning you're humming it when you stir your coffee
Speaker 2: and don't remember how it got there. Outside school children
Speaker 2: hurry past the windows, their voices high and bright. In
Speaker 2: the park, I find a group crowded around the jungle gym,
Speaker 2: clapping in rhythm. Their teacher, a city transplant from what
Speaker 2: I overhear, soorts teams for a game. The clapping chant
Speaker 2: they sing has that same sliding motif, scattered and echoing
Speaker 2: the humming. When the teacher returns to the bench, I
Speaker 2: wave and strike up a conversation. Funny little tune those
Speaker 2: kids have, isn't it, I venture, She nods, half smiling.
Speaker 2: I thought they made it up themselves. New children add
Speaker 2: their own lines every week. Sometimes I hear it in
Speaker 2: the halls. Echoes only, I ask the children, but their
Speaker 2: explanations dissolve into giggles and nonsense. It's just a song
Speaker 2: for running, one declares, then spins away into the playground throng.
Speaker 2: That's the shape of it everywhere. Older residents say always,
Speaker 2: but their details differ. Some claim the tunes are folks
Speaker 2: song from the ear of the depot workers, something for
Speaker 2: passing the time between the arrivals. Others insist it started
Speaker 2: as a local bakery jingle played on the radio in
Speaker 2: the sixties. When pressed, no two can humme it all
Speaker 2: the way through. The melody is a shifting river, already
Speaker 2: gone before you can cup it in your hands. In
Speaker 2: the small sunlit nook of the Rosewood Library, I try
Speaker 2: a new tactic. The local history section is narrow but proud,
Speaker 2: with exhibits on the depot, binders about all girl Scout troops,
Speaker 2: even a locked glass case containing the music of Rosewood display.
Speaker 2: I browse catalogs, flip through photo albums, even search the
Speaker 2: few cassette tapes of depot broadcasts and town parades left
Speaker 2: in the archives. Not a whisper, not a mention of
Speaker 2: the tune anywhere, no title, no Rosewood town song. I
Speaker 2: scan the indexes music, folklore, school songs, festivals, railway work songs.
Speaker 2: Nothing connects. Frustrated, I start jotting little clues in a
Speaker 2: notebook snippets, overheard and partial lyrics half remembered by others,
Speaker 2: but they're never quite in agreement. The more I collect,
Speaker 2: the less the sum resembles anything fixed. What sung in
Speaker 2: the bakery is not quite the same as what's whistled
Speaker 2: at the park, yet each recognizes the other in a
Speaker 2: subtle dance of familiarity. I try to record the humming
Speaker 2: on my phone, casual and unobtrusive. Sometimes it works. I
Speaker 2: capture Lydia and a customer weaving the melody around the
Speaker 2: closing bell. But when I ask either to hum the
Speaker 2: whole thing for me, they falter, substitute silly syllables, or
Speaker 2: stumble into a different tune Altogether, the recording loses the shape.
Speaker 2: It becomes as amorphous as the scattered memories attached to it.
Speaker 2: What's most unnerving is its slipperiness. The tune is there, shared,
Speaker 2: but each time I reach for it, it reshapes itself,
Speaker 2: as if protecting its secrets by remaining unfinished. The next week,
Speaker 2: at the rec center's senior lunch, I try a gentle experiment.
Speaker 2: After the meal, when plates are cleared and the tables
Speaker 2: linger in semicircles, I propose a sing along friends, Let's
Speaker 2: see if we can put that tune together, all at
Speaker 2: once beside each other. They laugh, they're game, but when
Speaker 2: I ask who will start, the room falls into sheepish
Speaker 2: glances and embarrassed smiles. Mister Connolly hums an uncertain phrase.
Speaker 2: Evelyn jumps in with a similar but clearly different version.
Speaker 2: Then six others chime in, each diverging by a note
Speaker 2: here an unexpected skip there. The sound, instead of harmonizing,
Speaker 2: drifts into a gentle jumble, pleasant but scattered. After several tries,
Speaker 2: every one gives up trying to pin it down. We're
Speaker 2: like a pack of stray cats. Someone jokes, all me
Speaker 2: owing in key, none of us together. Afterward, I walk
Speaker 2: over to the local middle school, seeking out Miss Hernandez,
Speaker 2: who took over music instruction from Evelin. She is crisp attentive,
Speaker 2: a lover of folk harmonies and old field recordings, constantly
Speaker 2: cataloging student creations for the annual pageant. Listening to my question,
Speaker 2: she's thoughtful. It reminds me of folk tunes that have
Speaker 2: no canonical form. Over time, every group morphs them. A
Speaker 2: song for wheat threshes becomes one for railway workers, then
Speaker 2: for schoolyard skipping ropes. The melody is the same, but
Speaker 2: the details fray and bend. The ones that truly persist
Speaker 2: never stay still. They change to fit new hands and voices.
Speaker 2: Maybe your town tune is like that, not nostalgia, but
Speaker 2: an ongoing habit. She considers other legends, like your ral
Speaker 2: bell stories are rooted in fixed events. This melody seems
Speaker 2: to float. It's not about remembering the past, but about
Speaker 2: making something together, each time a little different. I walk
Speaker 2: away from our conversation feeling newly uncertain. The humming is
Speaker 2: less a song than a social custom, a living thing
Speaker 2: in sound. It adapts, bends, accepts newcomers, without manual or
Speaker 2: rule book. Perhaps this is why none can hum it alone,
Speaker 2: or start it. If the melody resists becoming an artifact,
Speaker 2: then what is it? A communal impulse, some kind of
Speaker 2: echo of the town itself, refreshed with every new resident
Speaker 2: and every passing day. This possibility, quietly magical, haunts me
Speaker 2: in a pleasant way. The curiosity refuses to rest. One afternoon,
Speaker 2: back at the library, I ask about deeper archives. The librarian,
Speaker 2: whose encyclopedic recall is slightly sharper than Evelind's offers, a
Speaker 2: battered community binder from the miscellaneous music shelf, tucked between
Speaker 2: scrap books of garden club winners and picnics from before
Speaker 2: the war. Leafing through yellowed pages, I find it a neat,
Speaker 2: undated piece of sheep music, handwritten at the top for
Speaker 2: later days by Marian Haverford with a blacking note, a
Speaker 2: tune for Rosewood's end of day gatherings. May it drift
Speaker 2: and change as needed. The melody line is unmistakeacably kin
Speaker 2: to the town tune, same gentle arc, similar phrasing, but
Speaker 2: not identical. A few intervals land. Strangely, some verses are
Speaker 2: scribbled out and replaced in at least three different hands,
Speaker 2: several dated decades apart. In the margins, pencil scrawls read
Speaker 2: add refrains for Deppo workers in one script below another
Speaker 2: for Anne's picnic new verse. Even the lyrics, fragmented at best,
Speaker 2: don't quite match what I've overheard in spoken snippets. The
Speaker 2: tune stretches and creaks across pages lined by the history
Speaker 2: of hands, revising, forgetting, and reimagining. My fingers shake as
Speaker 2: I balance my note book atop a volume of Rosewood
Speaker 2: memoirs copying passages. Who was Marian Haverford, I asked the
Speaker 2: librarian quietly, she smiles, Oh, Marian, legendary music teacher, taught
Speaker 2: three generations, led song circles on the depot lawn, back
Speaker 2: when the town was still bustling. Music was her answer
Speaker 2: to every kind of trouble, or so the stories go.
Speaker 2: A little digging brings me to a series of interviews
Speaker 2: with her students held on deposit in the reference room
Speaker 2: elderly alumni. I recollect Missus Haverford's circles, where every one
Speaker 2: got a turn and every verse was new. She believed
Speaker 2: famously that the role of music wasn't to preserve, but
Speaker 2: to bind day by day. There's another detail. For decades,
Speaker 2: the Haverford family ran a music box shop on Maine,
Speaker 2: closed only fifteen years ago, where it said visitors could
Speaker 2: request a tune tailored for the moment. The shop's few
Speaker 2: surviving music boxes, according to local legend, played haunting melodies,
Speaker 2: none ever quite the same, but all reminiscent of that
Speaker 2: old Rosewood tune. I realize, as I scrawl my final
Speaker 2: note of the day, that the melody's source is neither
Speaker 2: lost nor fully remembered. It was borne, intentional, crafted for
Speaker 2: the gathering, the gathering then feeding into it with each
Speaker 2: new performance. With every generation, the tune was altered, expanded,
Speaker 2: forgotten in places, and remembered anew in others, until its
Speaker 2: source was only partly discernible beneath the patchwork. The town's
Speaker 2: melody is not a static inheritance, but a living tradition,
Speaker 2: a gentle, ever changing act, half ritual, half improvisation. Each
Speaker 2: of us carries a fragment, and together, unknowingly or otherwise,
Speaker 2: we keep singing the song that never quite ends or
Speaker 2: quite repeats. I pack up my note book, the line
Speaker 2: from Missus Haverford's notes echoing, may it drift and change
Speaker 2: as needed. The mystery remains, but it's no longer opaque.
Speaker 2: Now it feels almost like a mirror, reflecting the town's
Speaker 2: own continuous act of belonging. Missus Haverford's phrase, may it
Speaker 2: drift and change as needed, rattles softly in my chest.
Speaker 2: As I pocket my notes and step into the late
Speaker 2: afternoon bustle of main Street. It's as if a veil
Speaker 2: has shifted. Even the sound of the the town's traffic
Speaker 2: feels briefly musical, the rumble of a distant delivery truck
Speaker 2: almost blending into the slow arc of the melody I've
Speaker 2: hunted these past weeks. The mystery isn't solved, not cleanly,
Speaker 2: but I taste the first edge of understanding the song.
Speaker 2: Rosewood's tune is part artifact, part daily improvisation, a humming
Speaker 2: made by many hands and never held by one. And
Speaker 2: now a new question pushes forward when that's less about
Speaker 2: origin and more about meaning. The tune shifting nature feels
Speaker 2: both deliberate and precious, And as I trudge away from
Speaker 2: the old library doors, I realize that what I want
Speaker 2: most is to hear not just the melody itself, but
Speaker 2: the full shape of all its variations. What does it
Speaker 2: add up to if no one can give me the
Speaker 2: real version? What would happen if we all sang what
Speaker 2: we remembered all at once? With that seed in mind,
Speaker 2: I find myself that night's sketching out names, times dates,
Speaker 2: a postal worker's ledger for a very different kind of delivery,
Speaker 2: phoning a few friends. Evelin, who picks up before the
Speaker 2: second ring I knew you'd be calling about that song,
Speaker 2: is delighted by the idea of a gathering to sort
Speaker 2: out the tune. Marcus is game too. He's keen to record,
Speaker 2: and even offers to bring portable kit from the station
Speaker 2: for posterity, but also for the pure pleasure of chaos.
Speaker 2: Lydia insists on baking something for the occasion and laughs
Speaker 2: heartily when I ask her not to hum while making
Speaker 2: cinnamon rolls in case she leaks a bias into the dough.
Speaker 2: By Saturday morning, word has spread up and down Rosewood's
Speaker 2: Gentle grape Vein. No one can agree what to call
Speaker 2: what I've convened evelin posts fliers for a song circle.
Speaker 2: Marcus dubs it a tune scavenger hunt on his broadcast,
Speaker 2: and some of the radio Club crew just refer to
Speaker 2: it as that humming test. We reserve the park's picnic
Speaker 2: green close enough to the old depot that its ghostly
Speaker 2: presence looms at the edge of vision. Folding chairs bloom
Speaker 2: in crooked clusters, eyes and Thermosies pass from hand to hand.
Speaker 2: Children and great grandparents settle on checkered blankets. There's good
Speaker 2: natured skepticism, excitement, a little self consciousness, the sense that perhaps,
Speaker 2: just this once, we will get to the root of
Speaker 2: a thing we've all inhabited without naming. I open with
Speaker 2: a few words, honest, practical, stumbling a little with my hands,
Speaker 2: nervous because suddenly I am not chasing the story but
Speaker 2: shepherding it. We're here, I say, because something about the
Speaker 2: way we hum together keeps tickling at the edge of memory.
Speaker 2: I'd like us to try, just for fun, to hear
Speaker 2: what the song sounds like when we all let ourselves
Speaker 2: remember it at the same time. No right way, no
Speaker 2: wrong way. The laughter that follows is warm, the kind
Speaker 2: that comes when a group recognizes its colluding in something
Speaker 2: slightly silly. But when Evelin encourages everyone to give it
Speaker 2: a go, the response is immediate. Voices rise, soft at first,
Speaker 2: a little disjointed, but earnest across the lawn, a rippling
Speaker 2: of melody zigzags. Children sing in claps and skips. Elders
Speaker 2: hum with deeper, measured notes. A few out of towners
Speaker 2: attempt to whistle along, chasing by ear what they hear
Speaker 2: around them. It starts as a jumble, then wonder of wonders.
Speaker 2: It transforms, merging in and out, stumbling but never stopping,
Speaker 2: as if a current of sounds stitches together disparate threads,
Speaker 2: everyone listening and adjusting to each other. Key phrases crop up,
Speaker 2: a line about ending days, a longer note in the
Speaker 2: style of the depot's old work songs, fragments about bread
Speaker 2: at dawn or every window's lamplight on the street. There
Speaker 2: are accidental harmonies, laughter when verses collide, but no embarrassment.
Speaker 2: The collective sound isn't perfect, but it is unmistakably alive,
Speaker 2: weaving through the shouts of the youngest and the tired
Speaker 2: humming of the oldest. No one can remember starting it,
Speaker 2: no one claims to finish it. When the energy ebbs,
Speaker 2: it fades away with a collectively drawn breath, a warmth
Speaker 2: lingering as everyone smiles at the resulting oddity. Do we
Speaker 2: even sing the same tune? Asks Yvonne, to general hilarity.
Speaker 2: But Marcus, headphones on, having recorded the whole affair, grins
Speaker 2: in satisfaction. Not the same, he says, but perfectly Rosewood.
Speaker 2: Later he plays clips into his little field mixer, inviting
Speaker 2: anyone to listen through his headphones. The effect is astonishing.
Speaker 2: Each recording played in sequence or mashed together, reveals both
Speaker 2: difference and coherence. Some groups insert lines of nostalgia Mammer's
Speaker 2: Morning Song or evening Moon Round, while others, notably the children,
Speaker 2: stick to skips and refrains invented on the spot. A
Speaker 2: trio of younger adults recent arrivals layer phrases about trains
Speaker 2: leaving slow and picking out a house with a red mailbox.
Speaker 2: Lydia with her bakery crew warbles something about rolls rising
Speaker 2: warm that no one can place, but which earns appreciative
Speaker 2: applause anyway. Marcus, ever, the experimenter, invites folks up to
Speaker 2: the microphone, cuing them to sing your version, no judgment.
Speaker 2: The collection grows, each take distinct yet sharing in commoner motif,
Speaker 2: something fluid, adaptable, yet instantly recognizable as belonging to the
Speaker 2: same family. One child, coaxed up nervously by her grandmother,
Speaker 2: improvises a wordless melody that echoes more in rhythm than
Speaker 2: in notes. The whole park listens, learns, and adapts. After
Speaker 2: the picnic, Marcus proposes airing a mash up on his
Speaker 2: Sunday program. It takes some convincing privacy is important, and
Speaker 2: some are shy, but soon enough we have a three
Speaker 2: minute audio montage on air. Snippets flow one to another, railway,
Speaker 2: verse to bakery patter to children's chant. The lines are
Speaker 2: rough in places, but the whole is moving. Listeners call in,
Speaker 2: recognizing pieces as their own. That's my wife's aunt's line
Speaker 2: about the lampler, or else, admitting be amusement. That wasn't
Speaker 2: how it went in my house. Some say the song
Speaker 2: left them when they lived elsewhere, but came back without asking.
Speaker 2: After a month at home. A few self identified skeptics
Speaker 2: called to say they've never learned it, and yet, when prompted,
Speaker 2: managed to hum most of a phrase over the phone
Speaker 2: before dissolving into laughter at their own confusion. The distinction
Speaker 2: between learning and remembering blurs until it becomes moot. Doctor Lynn,
Speaker 2: the new psychologist in town here only one year, here's
Speaker 2: the broadcast, and reaches out for coffee with me and
Speaker 2: mark Us. The following week, we meet at Lydia's, where
Speaker 2: the subtler trace of the tune curls around the clatter
Speaker 2: of mugs. Doctor Lynn is young, with an analytic manner,
Speaker 2: but kind aware of how deeply ritual roots itself in
Speaker 2: towns like this. She listens to a half dozen recordings
Speaker 2: I supply, then suggests a new tack. This isn't a
Speaker 2: song in the traditional sense, she says. It lacks a
Speaker 2: canonical structure. For one, what it has remarkably is modularity.
Speaker 2: The melodies a framework, welcoming variation, not resisting it. It
Speaker 2: reminds me of cognitive earworms, songs that persist not because
Speaker 2: they're catchy, but because each listener unconsciously adapts them to
Speaker 2: fit their own circumstances. Marcus adds. And because no one
Speaker 2: ever sings the whole thing alone, it always waits for
Speaker 2: you to join in. It's the perfect memory puzzle, familiar
Speaker 2: but never complete. Evelin summoned by Lydia from the back
Speaker 2: room with an apple turnover for moral support smiles. It's
Speaker 2: like a patchwork. Each new voice fills in a square,
Speaker 2: but the whole blanket only appears when you stand back
Speaker 2: and squint hard enough. Intrigued, doctor Lynn continues. From a
Speaker 2: psychological view, the tune may act as a social glue.
Speaker 2: Its uncertainty forces you to listen, to match, to hesitate
Speaker 2: just long enough for someone else to go contribute that
Speaker 2: collectively unfinished feeling, its community in action. The more we talk,
Speaker 2: the more I realize that the failure of the town's
Speaker 2: melody to be locked down, standardized, or even properly named,
Speaker 2: is precisely what allows it to flourish across generations. Its
Speaker 2: very shapelessness is an asset. Within this framework, people can
Speaker 2: participate without anxiety, knowing that their version is as correct
Speaker 2: as anyone else's, that mistakes will be woven seamlessly into
Speaker 2: the evolving pattern. Even those who claim never to have
Speaker 2: learned it invariably slip into the rhythm when surrounded by others.
Speaker 2: Those who have moved away carry only a ghostly remnant,
Speaker 2: but upon return, the melody finds them again, settling back
Speaker 2: like the shape of an old jacket. In the following days,
Speaker 2: I follow a growing impulse. Now that I see the
Speaker 2: song more as a living, breathing thing, I want to
Speaker 2: gather as many forms as possible, an amateur folkloreist's dream.
Speaker 2: At trivia night that week, I pass around blank pages,
Speaker 2: inviting brief lyrics, scribbles, or descriptions. Don't worry about the
Speaker 2: tune I write at the top, Just offer how it feels,
Speaker 2: memory image line. The responses are an anthology of small
Speaker 2: town intimacy. Mamma called us in with it. Dad tap
Speaker 2: the steering wheel, last train whistle, like an exhale taste
Speaker 2: of honey. Sunday mornings, sunset at the depots steps. When
Speaker 2: lights come on, I see that the song is now
Speaker 2: less event than process, less an enigma to solve than
Speaker 2: a history to be witnessed in action. There's no central owner,
Speaker 2: instead a constellation of reference points, each guiding the next.
Speaker 2: Everyone expects someone else will finish it, mark us notes,
Speaker 2: so it never ends. That's the trick. Curious as ever,
Speaker 2: I email several musicologists, professors I find, with little effort
Speaker 2: attached to state universities, specialists in folk and communal music.
Speaker 2: I send them recordings, lyric sheets, stories. Responses trickle in.
Speaker 2: Most say, after polite apologies, that the melody is not
Speaker 2: featured in any documentation of regional folk music or rail
Speaker 2: works on collections. Its apparent modularity, writes one, is its
Speaker 2: defining trait, its reminiscent of field chants or chain gangs songs,
Speaker 2: but not conclusively. It may simply be an emergent tradition,
Speaker 2: a tune that thrives on forgetting as much as remembering.
Speaker 2: I search, too, for analogs, paging through our digitized town papers,
Speaker 2: looking for clues. There a nineteen fifty six piece in
Speaker 2: the Rosewood Review mentions locals whistling the depot tune at
Speaker 2: shift's end, but nothing more, no formal arrangement, no charted lyrics,
Speaker 2: only the implication that even then it was considered background weather,
Speaker 2: not worthy of recording, perhaps because it was always about
Speaker 2: the act rather than the artifact. Meanwhile, Lydia and I
Speaker 2: make an expedition to her late aunt's attic, hunting for
Speaker 2: one of the original Haverford music boxes. The place smells
Speaker 2: of moth balls and flower sacks and unsettled dust. We
Speaker 2: find a plain wooden box, lacker faded, its winding key,
Speaker 2: a little stiff, but still working. We listen. The tune
Speaker 2: that issues forth is cousin to the Rosewood melody, but
Speaker 2: with differences that jump out. The opening notes familiar, the
Speaker 2: ending diverging half a phrase earlier than expected. Lydia lights up.
Speaker 2: That's almost it, except it falls off like the box
Speaker 2: can't remember the last line. We laugh, a machine caught
Speaker 2: in the same amnesia as its makers. One afternoon, a
Speaker 2: railway enthusiast passing through hears our story at the depot
Speaker 2: and shares his own. Finds field recordings of old trainmen's
Speaker 2: work chants distant echoes perhaps related, but none matches Rosewood's
Speaker 2: melody precisely. Patterns converge all across the region, he says,
Speaker 2: but yours is slipperier than most like it refuses to
Speaker 2: be archived. Later, Evelin's friend brings her granddaughter, a city child,
Speaker 2: sharp and skeptical, to trivia night. I ask, experimentally, care
Speaker 2: to try humming the town tune. She wrinkles her nose,
Speaker 2: listens to others, then produces her own refracted melody, warbling
Speaker 2: and bright, punctuated with brand new phrases. I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2: She giggles, but it felt like that's what every one
Speaker 2: else was singing. The process repeats itself. Newcomers improvise long
Speaker 2: tim as half remember. The thread holds together through variation
Speaker 2: rather than imitation. At some point, I begin to suspect
Speaker 2: that the tune cannot be, and perhaps never was, an
Speaker 2: artifact to be captured, no more than a shadow can
Speaker 2: be scooped up and preserved in a box. Its coherence
Speaker 2: lies in adaptability. Its survival paradoxically depends on its refusal
Speaker 2: to settle. What would it mean if our attempts to
Speaker 2: define or record only serve to mask its deeper function.
Speaker 2: I turned for another angle to those who have left
Speaker 2: and come back. Mister Connolly, when pressed, reveals that as
Speaker 2: a young man, he spent a decade in the city
Speaker 2: away from Rosewood, the tune he muses over tepid tea,
Speaker 2: staring out the rec center window. I forgot it completely
Speaker 2: after I left, ten years, not a hint, moved back,
Speaker 2: months went by, still nothing. Then one night, passing the bakery,
Speaker 2: I started humming. It was like it found me again,
Speaker 2: like I'd never left. Maybe that's how Rosewood remembers itself,
Speaker 2: holding on, but only for the ones who return. Other
Speaker 2: returnees echo the same strange pattern absent from Rosewood. The
Speaker 2: song fades, memory of it, going from specific to blank.
Speaker 2: Not until after a week or more do they pick
Speaker 2: it up, usually by accident hearing another hum the phrase.
Speaker 2: I guess it's a town thing, says Yvonn, returning after years.
Speaker 2: It isn't anywhere but here. This pattern of forgetting and
Speaker 2: rediscovering feels important at a regular gathering. Evelin and I
Speaker 2: review the rec Center's collection of elder interviews. Many allude
Speaker 2: mid conversation to Rosewood's tune as if assuming all would understand.
Speaker 2: Some hesitate, almost bashful when prompted to sing. The phrase,
Speaker 2: when voiced is always a little different. Good night station lights,
Speaker 2: or when the bakery bell rings time for home in
Speaker 2: gentle counterpoint, but always whatever version, the melody commits to
Speaker 2: no single form, never quite settling long enough to be standard.
Speaker 2: I ask Evelin about when in town life the melody
Speaker 2: is loudest. She lists the depot, festival, trivia, Lulls Bakery closing,
Speaker 2: Sunday sunset on the Green. It's about transition, she says.
Speaker 2: When something ends or almost does, people fill the gap.
Speaker 2: We mark the handover with a hum. This, I begin
Speaker 2: to think is the true tradition in Rosewood. The act
Speaker 2: of changing, arriving, departing is buffered with a melody that
Speaker 2: both links and lets go. Doctor Lynn, whose intellect blends
Speaker 2: acute questioning with a gentle presence, speculates the song isn't
Speaker 2: about nostalgia or performance, but about continuity. Its very formlessness
Speaker 2: keeps it from being corrupted or forgotten. It's a social mechanism,
Speaker 2: usefulness hidden in ritual. If the town feels itself changing,
Speaker 2: or when a gathering breaks up, the tune prompts everyone
Speaker 2: to recall, if only briefly, what it means to belong.
Speaker 2: I walk the railway path to the library, holding these thoughts,
Speaker 2: and ask to revisit missus Haverford's letters. Formidable, looping handwriting,
Speaker 2: yellowed with time, they are chatty and wise, full of
Speaker 2: meditations on music as community practice. One line stands out
Speaker 2: songs that connect without being the same, letting each person
Speaker 2: add their day's voice, a melody etched in the doing,
Speaker 2: not the memory. In a later note, she writes about
Speaker 2: traveling to other towns, experimenting with music circles else and
Speaker 2: finding that a few had echoes community songs that similarly
Speaker 2: shifted away from the page as soon as anyone tried
Speaker 2: to record them, but none apparently became as woven into
Speaker 2: the fabric of daily life as Rosewood s. As the
Speaker 2: depot reminiscence event approaches one of the towns small big occasions,
Speaker 2: I joined the crowd, milling in its shadow under the
Speaker 2: tall arched windows and heavy wooden eaves. Lawn Chairs dot
Speaker 2: the platform, Children play tag between benches, while a podium
Speaker 2: is set up for speeches that will eventually dissolve into
Speaker 2: toasts and laughter. Midway through the afternoon, as the mood
Speaker 2: becomes languid and sunburned, someone, on Evelin's suggestion, proposes one
Speaker 2: last try at reconstructing the old tune. Three groups break off, retarees,
Speaker 2: parents with children, and a handful of recent arrivals. Each
Speaker 2: group gathers under different tree, and, spurred by a sense
Speaker 2: of performance, attempts to remember the song together. What emerges
Speaker 2: is less a song and more a series of quilted motifs,
Speaker 2: shared beginnings, diverging middles, parallel endings that all nevertheless resolve
Speaker 2: into a collective feeling. When one group stirs up a
Speaker 2: particularly plaintive verse, laughter breaks out as elderly and young
Speaker 2: alike realize how much their lyrics disagree. But then something happens,
Speaker 2: a pattern I've watched a dozen times but not fully
Speaker 2: understood until now. Each group, whatever melody, whatever idiosyncratic wording,
Speaker 2: ends their attempt with a collective slodom, a single drawn
Speaker 2: out note, sometimes wordless, sometimes a phrase like for the
Speaker 2: day that's done, or lights come on, time to rest,
Speaker 2: And when every one listens, heads cocked, eyes humor bright,
Speaker 2: they all nod at ease. The ending's being different, Yes,
Speaker 2: but the feeling of resolved togetherness common. It hits me
Speaker 2: with a sudden, profound clarity. The song's power isn't in
Speaker 2: the tune at all, nor the words, nor memory, nor tradition.
Speaker 2: As such, it is at root an act of shared
Speaker 2: creative uncertainty, many people holding and releasing the same idea
Speaker 2: at once, forgiving of error, open to renewal. The tune
Speaker 2: lives in the doing, never in the archive. Its unfinishedness
Speaker 2: is its magic. By refraining from completion, Roseward's song ensures
Speaker 2: that no moment of togetherness is ever truly over, and
Speaker 2: no one's contribution is ever wrong or obsolete. It's Marcus
Speaker 2: who puts a finger on this as we gather afterward,
Speaker 2: perched around a small table with doctor Lynn and Evelin
Speaker 2: while the depot event wins toward night. It's really not
Speaker 2: about the melody at all, he muses. It's that every
Speaker 2: one expects some one else will finish it. One person
Speaker 2: starts off, another catches it. They drift in and out,
Speaker 2: so it never really ends. You just pass it on.
Speaker 2: Doctor Lynn smiling, finishes her apple turnover and sets her
Speaker 2: fork down carefully. It's a vessel, not for memory, but
Speaker 2: for connection, a way of being with others, carried along
Speaker 2: by not knowing who's got the right answer. You lean
Speaker 2: into uncertainty, but the group carries you evel in half whimsical,
Speaker 2: half wise ads. It's a kind of forgiveness too. We
Speaker 2: forgive each other for forgetting, for drifting, for being not
Speaker 2: quite together but always still together. That's how we hold
Speaker 2: on listening. I realize at last that the song cannot
Speaker 2: be captured, solved, or even wholly understood, not in the
Speaker 2: ways I'd first wanted. Nor is this a deficiency. The
Speaker 2: town's unity is not built on uniformity, but on a
Speaker 2: ritualized space for difference, hesitation, improvisation. In Rosewood, memory is
Speaker 2: not a wall to be scaled, but a garden constantly receded.
Speaker 2: Every voice, old or young, offers up its own shade
Speaker 2: of the same ongoing tune. I walk home from the
Speaker 2: depot in the enveloping dusk, a gentle satisfaction. Humming quietly
Speaker 2: under my sternum, there's a subtle change in how I feel,
Speaker 2: not eager to solve or catch the melody anymore, but
Speaker 2: drawn instead to listen for its continued life, its invitation
Speaker 2: to collectively make meaning from confusion, It's a gift now,
Speaker 2: not a frustration, the presence of something living, incomplete and
Speaker 2: open to all. From that evening, I find myself tuned
Speaker 2: to the low buzz of the town's strange harmony on
Speaker 2: the bakery's front steps, after closing at the lonesome corners
Speaker 2: of park benches, as the depot clock's hands sweep past seven.
Speaker 2: The melody lives as much in its lapses as in
Speaker 2: its performances. Each time I sense it near by, I smile,
Speaker 2: buoyed by the knowledge that my own memory matters only
Speaker 2: as much as my willingness to join in and adapt,
Speaker 2: to build with others a community that never quite repeats itself.
Speaker 2: The people of Rosewood, acquaintances and friends alike, appear richer
Speaker 2: to me now, not as puzzle pieces hiding secret answers,
Speaker 2: but as collaborators in a work in progress archetect of
Speaker 2: a gentle, ongoing creative project that never aims to be completed,
Speaker 2: And I, retired mail carrier, become a humble courier, not
Speaker 2: of messages to be delivered and archived, but of questions
Speaker 2: meant only to be passed along, transformed by every new
Speaker 2: voice they meet. One evening, returning from a late visit
Speaker 2: to Lydia's. I pause by the empty dappot. The tough
Speaker 2: old doors are locked, and the windows mirror the first
Speaker 2: traces of the moon. The air is still scented, faintly
Speaker 2: of the bakery's last batch, and the metallic memory of
Speaker 2: trains long departed. Somewhere close but not visible, perhaps near
Speaker 2: the shadowed benches. I hear a low, overlapping hum, not
Speaker 2: a perfect match, but as surely related to Rosewood's song
Speaker 2: as family is to kin. It ripples, undulates, pauses, resumes.
Speaker 2: I try, almost without thinking, to recall the melody in
Speaker 2: my head, searching for a complete phrase to hum back.
Speaker 2: It slips from my lips as soundless breath, just the
Speaker 2: shimmer of a note unf finished, sufficient only to remind
Speaker 2: me of what it feels like to mean something together.
Speaker 2: For a long moment, I stand in that ambiguity, wondering
Speaker 2: what other songs we make in company, without ever fully
Speaker 2: knowing how much of belonging comes from the mysteries orchestrated
Speaker 2: between us, not in spite of but because they'll never
Speaker 2: be fully drawn. The melody swells, a shifting presence, neither
Speaker 2: captured nor lost, and I know without doubt. The most
Speaker 2: comforting knowledge is that it need never.
Speaker 1: End, and that is the end. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and I will see you in the next one.