What’s all that hollerin’ about? You must admit, it’s hard to holler with a mask on; kinda like wearing a dog collar. It holds you back

To holler, standard for greetings from hallo, holla, halloa, holloa, hillo, halo to our modern hello, which we seldom even use anymore anyway.

Tipping the hat went out in 1902 with The Correct Thing To Do in a book by the same name.

“It is not the correct thing to call to another person on the opposite side of the street or to talk or laugh loud.”

Down in the hollow of Spivey’s Corner, it makes folks want to scream.

Latin for sound, Echo was the fair maiden who pined away for love until only her voice remained.

Stop, look and listen used to be on the big X sign at all railroad crossings. We hollered at hobos on the track. Don’t go around crying “like the cheese done fell off your biscuit.”

Speak up! But know that words can be tools or weapons. Why go around looking like  “The Scream” in Mr. Munch’s painting when you could try a little primal scream  therapy. It could prove cathartic, traumatic, septic, lethargic, manic, anemic, apyretic, caustic, critic, ironic, eccentric, bariatric, climactic or in the end cosmic or weirdly romantic.

In France, the peasants revolted and threw their shoes, sabot, at the machinery and we get the word sabotage. Protests for women’s rights, civil rights, or human rights seem to be more effective “at the top of your lungs.”

Most animals do not get loud unless in pain. “A stuck pig squeals.”

In Salisbury, most loud voices have come from some parade, contest, horse race, cockfight, sporting event, or march from some cause de celeb.

Ezekiel 3:13: “I heard also the noise of the wings of living creatures that touched on another, and the noise of great rushing.”

“In May of 1754, the magistrate and militia officers of Rowan complained to the Assembly that Indians suspected of being Catawbas had committed severe gross abuses on the white people of the county”

A “substantial” building was erected by Captian Hugh Waddel two miles west of Statesville (Fort Dobbs).

You gotta know, there was some yelling going on when the Yankees hit town April 12, 1865 to “rid the Confederacy” and burn the prison.

Local ladies and fellow Masons pleaded with Gen. Stoneman to spare the old courthouse, and he did. It’s now the museum.

At a revival in November of 1887, John S. Henderson shouted that “next to religion, Salisbury most needed a cotton factory.”

On Election Days, whiskey flowed freely; fights and riots were common. In 1833, political differences between Charles Fisher and Judge Caldwell were settled in a challenge to a dual.

On May 27, 1908, the prohibition parade “led by the Rockwell band followed by 2,000 voters flying banners and yelling with utmost excitement, with evangelist Geo Stewart bringing up the rear in an automobile.”

The Holy Rollers can only hum the hymns in church now — so we don’t see many souls filled with the spirit using cymbals and drums.

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” Psalm 100:1

Join in on the Hallelujah Chorus if you would.

The Faith Fourth, V.J. Day and Krazy Klearanz were made for loud local celebration, including fireworks that are too loud.

The noise ordinance only helps loudspeakers after 11 p.m. or at a distance of 50 feet. Small minds have loud mouths all the time. As grandma used to say, “Now, settle down, behave and get it out of your system.”

In the meantime, think pleasant thoughts from a sweet like book filled with birds and flowers by John Ruskin. “Treasure houses of precious and restful  thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us; houses built without hands for our souls to live in.”

Clyde lives in Salisbury.