All about whistling

 At a very young age someone taught me how to whistle. He said to pucker up and exhale. But when you are losing your baby teeth it can affect the "pitch".

Then there was the following childhood refrain: I bought a wooden whistle and it would-en whistle - then I bought a steel whistle and steel it would-en whistle. Later an iron whistle and I-OR-Nobody could make it whistle. Now I have a tin whistle and I "tin" whistle.

Who can forget the "come on" line from "To HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT" when Bacall says to Bogart -"You know how to whistle, dontcha?"

You could set your watch by the factory whistle that pierced the air at Noon and five PM but that was a
long time ago when this country was studded with factories.

The latest buzz word by political pundits is "dog-whistle" - apparently it represents a coded message meant for just a certain segment of the population - played on a tin whistle. Shades of Orphan Annie!

We recently moved from Florida where we lived in a gated community on a quiet cul de sac and occasionally - if the wind was blowing from the west - we might hear the forlorn sound of the Florida East Coast train whistle in the distance. Now we are living in the city - on a main thorofare - with the Amtrak trains passing just beyond our parking area. There is something about a train whistle late at night. A woman of the world - not Dorothy Parker - was once quoted as saying "A train whistle is like a wolf whistle - you like to hear it even though you're not going anywhere."
tjs
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