Not many whistlers around these days

Maude McDaniel, Columnist

Don’t you love a whistling man? I do.

Last week I was leaving Martin’s, rather depressed by the speedy outlay of my week’s income, when in came a man I didn’t know from Adam. He was whistling away for all he was worth, and gave me a smile to go with it, and as we passed my heart lifted all by itself, and I had to smile too. I have no idea what he was whistling, but he set up my whole day.

When I was little, men whistled a lot. Not so much any more. Maybe it has to do with the fact that hardly anybody makes their own music nowadays. What with TV and the rest of the technology, the idea seems to be that, except maybe for church, you only make music if you get paid for it. People have become shy. They think it’s a professional thing, making music, and everyone will think you’re showing off if you even hum a little bit in public.

But back when I was small, every third or fourth man whistled, usually some tune like, “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” or “The Pennsylvania Polka.” I lived in the city, and guys walked past all the time, whistling, on their way to who knows where. At night, I heard them from my bedroom, out there on the streets, just quietly whistling their way along. There were a number of “saloons” (called bars, these days) within a block’s radius of the parsonage we lived in, which might explain a little of it. But it wasn’t just the eternal happy-hour guys who whistled. Our church treasurer whistled when he walked. (Purposely, I mean.) The only male teacher I had at Union Grade School whistled, though not when he taught, just in the halls, and then not loud. But he whistled.

Of course, I’m not talking about the whistling that came later — that construction workers directed at young girls who were supposed to be insulted about it, but, take it from me, they never were. (The low quotient of whistles that I drew from such sources was always a sore point with me.) Nor am I talking about the fancy whistling that some folks did on stage for a living. I mean just plain, average, ordinary whistling as they walked, indeed very much like the Seven Dwarfs on their way to and home from work, to pass the time and get the whistler from here to there with the least amount of boredom possible.

I always wanted to be a good whistler. You may remember (I’ve mentioned it before) that for years I worked at it and couldn’t get anything out. Until one day in church, when I was maybe 8 or 9, it happened. I was amazed, but not any more than my dad who was preaching at the time. Anyway, that’s how I became a whistler, and I was fairly good at it too. At least good enough to call my dogs when I wanted them.

That is, until I got Bell’s Palsy three years ago, which stopped my whistling in its tracks. It never came back, and now that it looks as if I’ve got a new dog around the house, I’m going to have to come up with some other way to get his attention.

Anyway, as far as social whistling goes, I don’t know when it stopped, but you rarely see a guy whistling unselfconsciously on the street any more. No doubt iPods and cell phones played a role in this loss, but I have this theory that the 60s and their drugs changed the whole world as we know it, never to be the same again. (Can you whistle on drugs as well as you can whistle drunk? I think not.)

Still, you’ve got to wonder how even that could have so quickly destroyed such a deep-seated human activity as whistling. I do believe people have gotten more self-conscious nowadays; maybe that’s why. Still, that hasn’t stopped them from doing other things that are a lot more embarrassing than whistling, like vacationing in Argentina, so that couldn’t be the answer.

Perhaps whistlers evolved out of existence, like lightning bugs. They just don’t happen much any more. (Naturally after I first wrote this column, I read an article that says that, after years of decline, good news: lightning bugs have come back by the billions this summer. Maybe the wet weather did the job.)

But casual whistling, just for the fun of it is gone. For good, I’m afraid, and no one knows why.

I miss it.

Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.