The days grew shorter and darker; the rain wet down the ground and the wind re-arranged the landscape. Emma Mae sat on her sofa and looked out the window at the dark winter sky. Emma Mae was an artist and loved the winter. It motivated her to work on art, stay inside and be creative. As the winter progressed she began more and more projects. Emma was an innovative artist and extremely skilled. Emma’s father was a carpenter by trade and she watched and learned from him. She learned how to build things with care and precision and was mathematically wise beyond her years. She could work out any crevice, corner or angle. For instance, Emma Mae’s niece Tandy wanted a doll house. Her parents could not afford such a childhood extravagance so Emma Mae, being the good aunt, built a very nice mid century modern A frame doll house for Tandy. The doll house was the last sensible thing that Emma Mae built! When Emma purchased her first house that is when all the trouble began.
Emma Mae loved wind chimes, but not your typical chimes. She liked them loud. Emma Mae’s wind chimes sounded like Harleys, car horns, doorbells, jack hammers, dentist drills and Skil saws. The chimes themselves looked beautiful and harmless enough. Nice hardwoods with rice paper patterns lacquered into them delicately tied together by clear fishing line, but when these angled pieces of wood collided, the sound was so jarring it sounded like an entire metropolitan city at lunch time.
Emma Mae lived in a quiet rural setting and this did not go over well with the neighbors. Every winter the wind would blow and the wind chimes would rage with a chaotic symphony of sound, Emma Mae thought it was soothing, she was hard of hearing in one ear so she liked everything loud.
The neighbors would ask Emma Mae politely to remove the wind chimes and she pretended not to hear them. A complaint was filed and still Emma Mae continued to make more and more chimes, her newest ones sounded like a lawn mower and a leaf blower.
The neighborhood had had enough, Emma Mae was arrested and put into jail for not cooperating with the police, and she continued to refuse the removal of her beloved wind chimes.
For the last two years Emma Mae has lived in the Warburten women’s correctional prison. She is still building her wind chimes but now she has an appreciative audience. Every other Sunday the women are allowed to see their families and they all assemble in the auditorium to hear the newest wind chime concert conducted by Emma Mae and her assistants. Apparently “Sound Now “ magazine will be interviewing her next month and Public Television just finished a feature to be aired next year. In the meantime, Emma Mae is working on some new chimes that sound like snoring, throat clearing and nose blowing, sounds that would make a mother cry, but to Emma Mae they are an auditory paradise.
