Saturday, August 10, 2013

Sounds

Different neighborhoods, countries, and regions of the world have their own unique sounds.  For the most part those aren't the things we think about when we remember places, but when I've been somewhere and return to it those sound memories come back and I realize that these are important parts of my experience.  One of the sounds I hear and remember that I've heard again here in France is the hollow echoing thud of a deadbolt in a steel door.  We have deadbolts in our doors at home and in my office door, but those doors are wooden and they don't make the same sound.  When my family first went to Kazakhstan in 2003 we were really surprised to find that all the doors to apartments were made of steel.  We were impressed with the extra layer of security but wondered if it was really necessary.  After all, I tend to feel fairly safe at home with my wood door, but something about these seemed really solid.  Kazakhstan was part of the former Soviet Union and as an adult who grew up during the Cold War, the concept that the poor unfortunates who lived in the Soviet Union would need steel doors somehow fit with my stereotypes.  After all, we learned in elementary school about how dangerous and evil the Soviet Union was and how the scary KGB could come after you and make you disappear, so on further reflection the steel door seemed to fit into the stereotypes of that era.

When I've had to replace or reposition locks in the wooden doors of my home or office, I have tended to look more closely at the mechanism of the lock and realize that despite the sense of security I have, wooden doors with deadbolts are really only as strong as the weakest link, and in the case of my home, that's a fairly slim piece of 70 year-old wood.  The office is probably a little more secure, but not anywhere as strong as those steel doors.  I've had occasion to see the doorjamb of a door that's been kicked in, and it's clear that a well-placed solid kick can break through that bit of wood on a lot of doors.

When we arrived in Paris the landlord showed me the "things to know" about the apartment, and one of them was the steel front door with magnetic and sliding dead-bolt.  I had never seen a magnetic lock before and was impressed that the lock needs the key both for the magnetic release and also to turn the deadbolt.  This is one solid door.  Many of the buildings on our street have steel doors, although just a block away most of the doors are of wood with elaborate decorative molding (more what I see in my mind's eye when I imagine Paris).  On our street when someone opens the deadbolt on a steel door, the sliding of the lock makes a loud click that echoes inside the steel door.  I've been hearing those steel deadbolts slide, both in our own apartment as people come and go and also when we have the windows open I can hear the deadbolts slide up and down the street when people go in and out of their front doors.  When these steel doors are slammed shut, the sound tends to reverberate inside the door, leaving a lasting echo.  I realized today that this sound is one that I tend to associate with traveling in Turkey or Kazakhstan, and just hearing it brings me a kind of nostalgia.

The curious thing was that I never expected France to have steel doors.  Somehow I have a stereotype of France as combining the "old country" and ornate architecture with classic features.  Now I'm wondering why in the US, where there is often a climate of fear, I've never seen steel doors except in places like bank vaults.  Perhaps people would reject them as too ugly or too loud.  When I search for steel front door, I find two types of images: those that are molded and finished to look like they are made of wood and those that have windows in them.  Neither is what I see here.  I'm not rushing out to buy a steel door (we live in a historic neighborhood, so as soon as the city caught wind of it they'd make us put the wood one back in anyway), but I do think it's interesting that the sound of these doors has become associated in my mind with travel.

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