When I was a youngster, John Gualdoni ran a grocery store in Brentwood, Missouri.  It was located on North and South Road.  The people in the grocery store were the clerks Bob and Louie, the butcher, and John himself.  We had to put up with what Bob and Louie had to wisecrack about as well the caustic comments of the butcher.  But I am in John Gualdoni’s debt because he had no music piped in over his loudspeakers.  As a matter of fact, he had no loudspeakers.
When I went, on rare occasions, to visit the dentist as a youngster, I would sit in the waiting room where I could hear the drilling going on in the dentist’s office.  For better or for worse, there was no such thing as television in those days and the dentist did nothing to entertain the prospective patients that he was preparing to drill on.
As a matter of information, I am a devotee of silence.  When I go to the grocery store, it is my intention to finish that exercise and to purchase all the things on my wife’s shopping list.  I don’t go to the grocery store to hear good music.  Similarly, I do not go to a concert hall to be told about the special on green beans just flown in from Chile.
It appears these days that the American public must be entertained at every step of the way.  I suppose that thinking about “John’s other wife” on the television, if that your idea of entertainment, might take your mind off what the dentist proposes to do to you. It has always been my thought that I would sit in silence without distractions with the hope that the dentist would take me quickly and finish with me promptly.  I don’t need to be entertained while those thoughts filter through my brain.
It appears to me that almost every grocery store has a loudspeaker where music is played to entertain the customers.  I don’t appreciate that music but rather regard it as an assault upon my ears.  We tend to shop twice a week at an upscale grocery chain here in New Jersey.  When they started the music a few years ago, I gritted my teeth and attempted to bear it.  Now, however, I say to my wife, “Let’s get the hell out of this place.”  It appears that I am fighting a losing battle.  More and more physicians’ offices and grocery stores play music on their loudspeakers.  Unhappily, the music is of poor quality and seems directed to the upbeat music, either aimed at inspiring the clerks to work harder or for the entertainment of teenage customers.  Unhappily, there are no teenage customers in the grocery stores that we use, so that noise is largely going to waste.
It seems to me that such piped in music is counterintuitive in that it encourages people to do their shopping and get out of the place.  The places that play upbeat music are defeating themselves.  On the other hand, Nordstrom’s, a top flight store selling clothing for men and women, often has a live musician performing works from Broadway shows.  As I listen to this music, I tend to hang around the store and often buy something that I didn’t know I needed.  In the end, I say “Hurray for Nordstrom’s” and thumbs down on the grocery stores and the physicians’ offices which try to entertain me at a time when I do not wish to be entertained.
There is one other factor that is of recent vintage.  I hear people talking on their cell phones.  Not being able to see, I tend to wait for an answer to a statement by one of the conversationalists.  It takes me two or three minutes to catch on to the fact that I am listening to a one-way conversation on a cell phone.
In the end, I conclude that music and loudspeakers have their place, but it is not necessarily in grocery stores and physician’s offices.  When push comes to shove, I would much prefer to hear John Gualdoni’s clerks, Louie and Bob, greet each other than to sustain the upbeat music that is the backbone of our grocery stores.  I know that this is a lonely voice but I do not go to the grocery store or to physicians’ offices for the purpose of being entertained.  But I am afraid that as time goes on, more and more places will succumb to the thought that I must be entertained when I walk into their premises.  And of course all of this leads me back to where this essay started.  My plaintive plea is, “Whatever happened to silence?”  It may be a losing battle but silence has my solid endorsement in almost every situation.
 
 
E. E. CARR
March 3, 2010
Essay 443
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Kevin’s commentary: Essay writing must be a little bit cathartic sometimes for Ezra. Why yell at the whippersnappers on the proverbial lawn when you could write an essay about how awful they are? I think I will probably take this or a similar method when I reach that age when you basically have full license to be crotchety about things.
More on the subject of this essay here.