Here Come the Bells

It’s spring, 1997. The bell tower at the Carrillon is always nicest this time of year; not only are the hills surrounding this 150-foot tall, 57-belled tower on the southern edge of the city particularly flowing and green and the breeze off of the river particularly sweet (when not after a rain, of course), it’s also among the most beautiful views in town. The museum itself has the air of a place trying to be stuck in time, the last bastion of a city whose memories of Wright Brothers and Dunbars and NCRs are still very fresh and very dear. But the hill itself, with that tower hovering above in the closest thing we have to a Washingtonian monument, is the place where the youngest of lovers go.  At the foot of this hill where the bell-tower rings out for life and love and lust every hour on the hour, this place really belongs to us, the brashest, the exhibitionists trying to shake up the calm of this town full of cars and wide-open roads and rolling hills.

It’s spring, 1997. I’ve been dating this girl now for about three weeks, so we’re still in the mode of finding as many different places to hook up as possible. It’s mid-afternoon, and the bells have just rung a Bach tune. The wind blows. We kiss. An older couple–he’s about thirty, she’s about twenty-two, so old for us– walks by. He grins at me, rasises his fist in the air.

“Yeah, man! Do it! I remember that spot. Good spot, good spot. Get it done!”

It’s spring, 1997. The bells ring a Bach tune, and I’m too young to know that just where I am, right now, so many others–the exhibitionists, the lovers, the Dautonians still home and not sure where they want to go–will do just what I am doing now for years to come. The bells ring on.