The antiquated dinner bell is a time honored reminder of delicious home-cooked meals. But like many another sound once so familiar, it is seldom heard nowadays.
For dinner bells and farm bells have gone the way of the cow-horn trumpet and conch-shell horn. For some folks the old bell possesses the miraculous power of formenting a bewitching nostalgia. It rouses a thousand memories of the recent past, a period with which most can identify, a time when there seemed to be a bell for everything.
Back in the day, every bell had a special sound and a special meaning. The farm bell, usually fastened to a post in the yard back of the house, was more than a dinner bell. It was never rung just for fun. The farm bell was meant to serve a definite purpose.
Each family had a code for calling individual members to the house. So many tolling notes, repeated at one or two minute intervals, meant company had come for pleasure or business or the cow had gotten loose or there was an errand to run.
When wild clanging notes rang out without a break, everyone ran for the house. This meant something was wrong, either at home or at a neighbor’s. It meant fire or accident or sudden sickness – a call for help.
Mostly, however, the farm bell was rung as a summons to dinner. There was a time when the hand-held dinner bell was a familiar sound along main street at noon.
When court was in session, the sheriff had a similar hand bell which he rang from the high balcony to announce that the judge was ready to take his seat on the bench and begin trial proceedings.
Then there was the wild clanging of the engine bell as the passenger train pulled into the station on its twice daily runs east and west between Asheville and Murphy. And it went on ringing as the passengers got off and the mail and freight handlers moved to and from the baggage car.
This was in that period when there were school bells and shop bells and harness bells. The old-timers tell of a great big bell at the school house that summoned the children to school in the morning. There was a first bell and a second bell, rung thirty minutes apart. At recess and at noon, a hand bell was used by the principal to signal the time for lining up by grades at the school house entrance and marching back to classrooms. The same hand bell signaled the change of classes.
In the day, the fire wagon was a push cart affair. At it had a bell attached with a long rope that was rung as the volunteer fireman raced to a fire.
There were clear tones of church bells – the big bells that hung in the steeples and were pulled with a rope. But they fell victim to mechanical chimes.
Gone too is the bell tone of the hand cranked telephone that hung on the wall of home and store and shop.
There were also turkey bells and sheep bells and cowbells. Of them all, only the cowbells have survived in any great number. But they are not the fine, wonderfully sound cowbells they used to be. For the truly fine cowbells were handcrafted of good metal and each had its own particular voice. A few fine cowbells are still around. But for the most part, they have been relegated to the collector’s shelf.
In another period, a time not so long ago, the sound of many toned bells was a part of the countryside. And none was prettier or more welcome than the ringing of the dinner bell, pealing out a summons to a home cooked meal.