Louise,
It is good to have you aboard. I enjoyed you book that I picked up at
the November Lakes Meet, abundant history of the Salt Flats and area as
well as our sport.
I too, have great audible memories of the Salt. For a few years in the
early sixties, I worked the "nine mile post" on record runs, at that
point on the flats you experience what real quietness is. While enjoying
the quietness, an engine is fired and warmed up in the pits, or on the
starting line, even though they are nine mile in the distance, the sound
is clear and crisp. A car finally leaves the line, headed toward you,
building RPMs as it grows ever nearer, on the phone you hear, "by the
five, shut off and coasting", but in your other ear you hear the RPMs
continue to build for another
15-20 seconds. Then finally the engine is off. Now you can hear the
crunch of the salt as the car rolls toward your station.
There is truly no place on earth that I have experienced the extremes of
solitude and sound, as at the Salt. I have often said that if I lost my
sight I would still go to Bonneville for to hear them run.
Tom, Redding CA 9:50AM PST, sunny and 40 degrees!
#216 D/CC
Louise Ann Noeth wrote:
>
> Because I have been 50% deaf since childhood, the melodic sounds of a finely
> tuned exhaust note were not only heard, but felt by this young girl. Many of
> my tactile encounters are partnered with sound. Quite different than the way
> most people "hear," my "listening" is a more involved process of sensing,
> interpreting and analyzing. It has driven people crazy over the years trying
> to figure out how I understand so much about ICE's, rockets, jets and other
> propulsion energy devices.
>
> If my life depended on it, I could not translate my level of spatial
> comprehension to the satisfaction of an empirically trained engineer, but I
> can talk their language with relative ease. Always have, always will, no
> book learning required. I understand people like Preston Tucker, Red Adair,
> Amelia Airheart, Madame Curie, et al. It is my opinion that these folks
> immersed themselves in the process and the process revealed itself to them.
>
> At age 7, when I first recollect becoming aware of engines, that
> "ruppety-rup-rupp-pup pup" that leaked out from the warped wooden boards of
> the garage across the street, it was as if the Pied Piper had taken up his
> flute, as if the moth detected the blazing bright bulb and I have been
> following the tune ever since.
>
> Crazy as hell, but it is a journey loaded with tales of many splendid
> trips -- fast trips usually, but even the ones that crawl along have given
> me cause to pause throughout my life.
>
> Best of all, the sounds that have given me the greatest joy have always been
> brought to life by the most amazing people I have had the good fortune to
> know. When I stand in the pre-dawn quiet, all alone in the middle of the
> salt flats, I smile to myself thanking God for his gifts to me as the sun
> spills out over the Newfoundland mountain range and ignites the crystalline
> surface with colors galore.
>
> It is a great time to be alive.
>
> LandSpeed Louise
>
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