This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Thursday, August 10, 2023
7:17pm
:::We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog for a moment of vindication:::
I did it. I finally lost my cool and called the police at 5:30 yesterday morning when the construction work at the golf course exploded a few too many brain cells.
This golf course is the bane of my existence. My bedroom window faces the maintenance shed, where every day, sometimes as early as 4am, the racket begins. There is a general roaring and much beeping often accompanied by shouts. You’d think it was a military base the way they run around over there.
The only thing I can say in its defense is that it usually subsides into mere muted roaring after a half hour or so. I have tried many times to figure out what they do out there that sounds like they’re demolishing the entire place and reconstructing it from the wails of screaming demons.
In the winter when the trees are bare and I can see over the fence, I still can’t figure it out. I’ve even walked down there on a few occasions to try and peek in, but it’s chained off and the only thing I can see is the back of a building that doesn’t look nearly large enough to house all the banshees that sound like they live there.
Some days I throw myself out of bed at 5 and slam the window shut, as if that’s going to really teach them a lesson. Then I put on my noise cancelling headphones and play a meditation. Loudly.
But lately, now that they are performing actual construction, the noise has reached epic levels.
For the past several months, at least since the beginning of spring, they have been systematically dismantling the place inch by inch. Every fairway, every green, every sand pit and water trap has been razed then reconfigured. Now they’ve moved onto the clubhouse, which is conveniently right across from the maintenance shed that is right outside my window.
All of this has been accompanied by the incessant beeping of multiple trucks moving at once.
I used to wonder how playing loud metal music in prisons could get people to crack and share their military secrets. Noise is annoying, but it’s not exactly waterboarding, right?
I’m here to tell you that noise is like waterboarding for your brain. And if I was in a prison with a beeping truck I’d have to give away all the nuclear codes.
This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard me complain about it. I’ve looked up noise ordinances multiple times, and I know for a fact that 7am is the earliest construction can start. I know a lot of things, like how many minutes per hour a church bell is allowed to ring and what the rules are for playing loud music in your car while driving through town.
But it wasn’t until yesterday that I finally lost my absolute s#!% and involved the police.
I called at 5:30.
A dispatcher answered and I, somewhat mortified to be calling about something so seemingly petty, explained that construction was happening and the noise was, politely stated, disruptive.
To the credit of the police department here, an officer called me within ten minutes. He introduced himself as Officer Brady.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Officer Brady and I had a little chat about the noise level and he explained that it was possible the golf course had a permit to start construction early. He would go out to check.
Twenty minutes later, Officer Brady called me back. He had visited the construction site and spoken to a few of the men. The men assured him that they did, in fact, have a permit to start work early.
None of them could produce said permit.
None of them could state what time said permit allowed them to start.
The “boss” wouldn’t be in until 9, and if Officer Brady would like to speak with him, he could return then.
I’m not sure if it’s a testament to Officer Brady or to the fact that I live in a safe enough town that the police can spend this much time on a noise complaint, but he did indeed return to the golf course to talk to the boss.
When he arrived, however, the entire crew had magically disappeared.
OB (we’re friends now) said he’d go back the following morning, today, to try to get to the bottom of it.
And good to his word, my buddy OB showed back up at the golf course at 5:30 this morning. The crew was there, as was the boss.
OB rang me up and said he had the boss there, but no construction was happening.
He was right. This morning the golf course was mysteriously silent. Except for the usual roaring, but that is… if you’ll allow the pun… par for the course.
OB and the boss and I had a bit of a three way chat at 5:30 this morning.
Boss said that no, they did not have a permit to start early, but no, they never started early. They GOT THERE at 5 or 5:30 but never started work until 7 as they were duly allowed.
I smell shenanigans. Who gets to work at 5 and then sits there until 7? We’re talking about construction workers, not CEOs who do 30 minutes of Vinyasa yoga before having their soy latte and reciting daily affirmations before crushing it in the board room.
You can barely get these people to show up when they’re supposed to, let alone when they don’t have to.
And what about the mysterious permit-not-a-permit? Why did his men feel compelled to say they had one? Liars or stupid, not sure which is worse.
Boss was absolutely positive that the noise was not them. Could it be that I was hearing the mowers? Those start early. Could it be that I was hearing the regular noise of the maintenance shed?
I assured OB that I have never known a mower to sound like a hammer or a buzzsaw, and that I knew very well what that shed sounded like every morning because I’ve been living next to it for four years. I even know what the garbage truck sounds like, which is like armageddon. With beeping.
No, this was something different entirely.
But what are you going to do when someone is clearly lamb-innocent and you have no physical proof of anything happening?
OB was contrite, but there wasn’t anything he could do at the moment. He promised to drive over for the next few mornings to keep an eye on things.
Somehow I suspect that I will have a few mornings, at least, of relative peace.
And now that me ‘n’ OB are buds, I have him on speed-text and will let him know the second a single hammer strikes.
And then send him a really nice Christmas present.
Win for the good guys.
Photo: golf course, under construction.