by Wesley Harris
There was a time when you could tell where you were in Ruston with your eyes closed.
All you had to do was listen.
Before traffic thickened and the world grew quieter in some ways and louder in others, Ruston had a soundtrack all its own—one that changed with the seasons, the time of day, and the part of town you called home.
For some, it was the steady hum of the Illinois Central line running east and west through town, paired with the shrill whistle of the ‘doodlebug,’ a self-propelled passenger car on the north-south Rock Island line. On a clear, crisp night, you didn’t have to be anywhere near the tracks. You could hear the low rumble of passing trains from miles away, the sound carrying across fields and neighborhoods like a distant storm that never quite arrived.
Trucks passing over the shuddering railroad crossing downtown often sounded like a deep-toned xylophone as timbers shifted, rattled, and boomed—loud enough to make you think a big rig had hit something solid.
In the early 1970s, you might have heard the roar of low-flying B-17 bombers—left over from World War II—dropping chemicals on invading fire ant colonies. It didn’t last long. The chemical, mirex, was later banned after concerns it caused cancer.
On fall afternoons, Louisiana Tech carried its own rhythm.
The chimes in the cupola atop Keeny Hall marked the hours with a steady, familiar cadence. Not far off, the band rehearsed, running through the fight song again and again. You didn’t have to see a stadium or a crowd to know it was football season.
And underneath it all, the campus had its own mechanical voice. At the Tech power plant, boilers squealed as they pushed out electricity and steam—an unseen assurance students would never be left in the dark.
On some days, the sky would crack without warning. Not thunder but a sharp, explosive boom that seemed to hit all at once, as if the air itself had split open. Windows rattled, screen doors shimmied in their frames, dogs barked, and conversations stopped.
The sonic booms of military jets were a reminder that something bigger was happening beyond Ruston, a cold war, even if we only felt it in a sudden crack of the sky.
For a time, a few days each December, carols and hymns proclaimed good cheer and Good News as the voices of the Singing Christmas Tree filled the air marking Jesus’s birthday. It was a sound many wish would return.
Downtown had its own voice.
The chimes of the Ruston State Bank clock marked the passing hours, steady and dependable. Church bells answered from a few blocks away—Trinity Methodist at the corner of Vienna Street and Alabama Avenue among them—calling people to worship or simply reminding them of the time.
And then there was the fire station horn.
Mounted atop the central fire station, it sounded every day at 11:00 a.m.—so reliable you could set your watch by it. But it served another purpose as well. When a fire alarm box was pulled, the horn would sound a coded sequence identifying the location. Box 132, for example, came across as one blast, followed by three, then two—simple signals that once carried urgent meaning across the city.
Out by the airport behind the hospital, the soundscape shifted . Planes droned overhead. Sometimes dozens at a time as student pilots overcorrected, dipped and climbed, chasing level as instructors barked commands and held on for dear life.
Evenings in town brought a different kind of noise.
Engines revved and tires squealed as cars pulled away from teen hangouts like Hood’s Drive-In, Village Plaza, and Extra Play as attention-seeking guys used their souped-up, jacked-up vehicles to proclaim, “Look at me!” It was part performance, part ritual.
And then there were the sounds that came to you.
The school bus braking to a stop in the afternoon, doors opening, children spilling out. The snick-snick-snick of playing cards slapping through bicycle tire spokes. The distant music of the ice cream truck drifting through neighborhoods in the summer.
Some sounds are constant, spanning the decades—dogs barking in the distance, music exploding from a passing car.
Others came and went. All of them, at the time, felt ordinary.
But taken together, they formed something else—a shared memory.
Ask enough people, and you begin to hear it again. A time measured in sounds that have long since faded.
Ruston still has a soundtrack.
But if you listen closely, you can still hear the old one beneath it.
