Bell Ringers

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

I am so thankful for the creek valley life that Greg and I now share. My younger life was very different. I knew nothing about chore clothes, some of which are rather tattered (why put on a good shirt when it will just get ripped by wire fencing or torn by brambles?). In my younger days, I wore proper uniforms.

Most of my classes were arranged with desks in typical desk formation. We learned in column formation, facing forward toward the blackboard, but English class was different. Our teacher arranged his classroom so that our desks were placed around the edges of the room, and we all sat with our backs to the wall, literally as well as figuratively. We would watch and listen as he paraded about the center of the room, dashing and dark haired in his two-piece suit, telling us in no uncertain terms that not one of us knew anything about the English language. Our papers were returned, slashed to red-marked shreds, with grades at the top that brought tears to our red-rimmed, all-nighters’ eyes.

But perhaps the most important lesson I learned English class had nothing to do with my use of the English language. It had to do with bare knees. On the very first day of class, the circular set up of our desks led me to the harsh realization that I was in a room filled with 18 pairs of bare knees. I had never before been in a class with all bare knees. My co-educational rearing, up to that stark moment, had always included boys with trouser-clad legs. Somehow, the concept of an “all-girls” school, had not fully entered into my 14-year-old mind, until, that is, I sat in English class and looked around the room at my classmates’ knees.

This epiphany shaped the next three years of my life. I quickly realized that I was thankfully attending a boarding school for girls that was not quite an “all-girls” school, for it offered its students “coordinated” extracurricular opportunities, in which there were real live boys, four miles away, attending an all-boys school in the valley. I resolved to become involved in as many co-educational, extracurricular activities as was humanly possible.

I signed up for the cross-country ski team, sailing team, bicycle club, conservation corps and choir. I joined Pro-Musica, a Renaissance music group, and I was a member of Bell Ringers. I was completely committed to broadening my extracurricular experiences, all with the goal of allowing some trousered legs into my social life. In time, however, my questionable motives faded and I grew to love my chosen extracurriculars, particularly Pro-Musica and Bell Ringers.

The faculty director of both of these programs was a short-statured, gentleman, who regularly invited us into his home for delicious family meals. After dinner, we would sit around his living room, bellies full, and make the most wonderful music. To this day, I play the wooden recorder. Its ancient notes calm me down when the world seems to turn too fast.

Bell Ringers, however, did not actually start out as a co-ed activity. I had the foresight, though, to realize that once I gained some proficiency, I would graduate from hand held bells on the “Hill,” to the chapel bells at the boys’ school in the “Valley.” I have magical memories of that first day in the chapel tower. I remember climbing the steps with both trepidation and delight. I had heard that the tower bells were difficult to master. 

It seemed as though we were climbing into an ancient castle, step after step. We eventually stood in a bright windowed room. The 10 tower bells were still farther over our heads. From each bell, hung a beautiful thick rope. I recall that a staircase led even farther up the walls of the tower from the floor on which we stood. A trap door passed through the ceiling to the bells that hung above, their ropes hanging down through holes in the ceiling to the floor where we stood below.

We each stood behind the rope of our assigned bell. Our director demonstrated how to first pull down on the bell rope, and then, as the bell swung up, to let the rope glide through our hands. He stood beside each one of us as we rang our bells in turn. 

I remember the feeling of that initial downward pull. I recall how the rope grew longer before me and then, as the bell above my head swung up on the other side of its arc, the rope grew shorter, and I let it slide up through my hands, never letting go, but holding a firm pressure on it to slow its upward momentum. Once slowed, the rope grew longer again and finally stopped as it was when I first stood beside it. We were warned to never let go of the rope, especially on its upward swing, or it would fly wildly and tangle with the other ropes, and the bell overhead would ring free. Everyone in the valley would then know that someone had lost control of a bell.

Our director returned to stand at our center and then pointed at each one of us in turn to pull on our rope and play our bell. We first played a simple scale, one bell chiming after the other, and then we learned to play chimes, letting our bells peel in a beautiful cacophony of ordered brilliant sound. As we played, I realized that our director was hearing each bell’s note a step ahead of our pulling due to the delay from the time of the pull to the sound of the bell. With practice I began to hear my own bell in the peel, and to feel the rhythm of the rope. Pull and let the rope glide down. Maintain control of the rope as it slid back up. Pause as the rope dropped back into its neutral position, and pull down again. We worked as a team. We each felt a part of the rhythm. We were thrilled. The bells sounded wonderful.

We so loved and respected our director. He taught us humility and thanks by inviting us to dinners at his home. He taught us to appreciate the joy of creating beautiful ancient music. He shared his life’s loves with us, and I have been forever grateful. 

Perhaps it’s no wonder that I love bells.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.