(Host) What’s the buzz in Rutland? According to commentator and former mayor Jeff Wennberg, the buzz is the ten-of-nine blast.
(Wennberg) The infamous Rutland airhorn sits atop the fire station, located almost dead center in Rutland City. Before the age of pagers, the horn was used to alert off-duty firefighters to respond to a general alarm. And like many other communities with similar horns, whistles or sirens, it was tested daily to ensure that it was always in working order. Most towns tested their siren at noon, apparently figuring that if you were still in bed at that hour you almost deserve to be awakened.
But local historians tell us that in the last century the city fathers enacted a curfew requiring teenagers to be off the streets by nine o’clock. So Rutland’s horn was tested at 8:50 for the additional purpose of alerting young people they had ten minutes to get home.
Despite the fact that the curfew was repealed shortly thereafter, the schedule stuck. Now, some folks still like the horn because it’s nostalgic and uniquely Rutland. Other folks dislike the horn because if you live within a block of the fire station it projects enough acoustic energy to knock the fillings out of your teeth. Every night. Over the last three years, the mayor and the aldermen have first reinstated the horn, then cut it back to two blasts a week, and just recently, and without warning, returned to the every night blare, apparently desiring to infuriate everyone.
Now I am about to share with you something few know. I’m the one who let the horn go silent in the first place. I was serving as mayor and living directly across from the fire station. We lived in the house for eight years and never once complained about the horn because, being Rutlanders, we knew all about it before we bought the property. And being a politician, I knew better than to tinker with tradition, especially for personal benefit.
One summer evening the horn let loose and it occurred to me that it had been at least a week since we’d heard it last. When I bumped into the fire chief I asked whether the policy had changed, and he said no, it was just a matter of whether the person on the desk remembered to watch the clock and push the button each night. Since there was no safety reason for the test, it had become a hit or miss proposition. I asked him whether it might be possible to miss a little more often and he said how about we miss six days a week? and I said great. I also told him that if anyone complained the daily schedule would immediately be reinstated.
But for the next two years no one complained. As far as I know almost no one even noticed except my neighbors, and they certainly were not going to complain. I left office, and purchased a new home, believing the matter was resolved.
The trouble ensued when the new mayor announced that he was going to reinstate the daily ten-of-nine whistle, pointing out to everyone for the first time that it was no longer a daily event, and triggering the cascade of controversy. What can politicians learn from this story? A 100 decibel blast every day tends to remind disgruntled voters that you blew it.
This is Jeff Wennberg in Rutland.
Jeff Wennberg is a former mayor of Rutland.