Siren Alerts

 Photo credit: thefullwiki.org

We live close to the border of a small, once rural, community that butts up against our little city and barely acknowledges its role as a Twin Cities suburb.  I respect that.  Their township still plays by the rules of pre-Millennials, and even their sirens continue to daily announce noon and 6 PM.

There is comfort for me, listening for the wails every day.  As a kid I was told that the sirens were meant to nudge farmers in from the fields toward their meals.  They called me to lunch and dinner, as well, on hot summer days when nothing else could drag me out of the swimming pool.  When the air was unsettled and thick, those sirens alerted us to coming tornadoes and we huddled in basements until the "all clear" sounded.

Eventually we'll probably all get our alerts from cell phones or brain chips.  But at least for now, be it air raids or a call to the local firefighters, sirens are a non-discriminatory message system.