When my husband and I first got married, we lived for about six months in his apartment in the city. It was my first time living in town so it was a learning curve for me.
It took some time for me to grow accustomed to the different noises, as well as the abundance of people that just seemed to be everywhere. While I’m glad now that we live in the country, there were definitely some amazing memories made in that little apartment.
One of the best recollections from those short six months involved listening to the police scanner at night.
Evening Routine – The Police Scanner
When Brian and I first met, he had a police scanner sitting on his bedside table. (I didn’t find this out until WAY later into our dating – truly.) He was in the habit of listening to the scanner chatter before he went to bed at night.
After our wedding, when I moved in, he kept up the routine and I found that I enjoyed the late night scanner noise.
We would hear different codes for possible break-ins, fires, and basic police activity such as what you would normally expect in a mid-size city. It was interesting.
One evening, there was a change from the normal communications. That is when things became somewhat fascinating.
Along Comes Ethel…
One night, we were laying there discussing our day before falling asleep, when a lady’s voice came over the scanner.
“Who’s that?” I asked Brian.
“No idea. She’s talking to someone.”
After listening for a few minutes, we realized that a lady, who we later nicknamed ‘Ethel,’ was calling her daughter. The scanner was inadvertently picking up someone’s cell phone.
The lady had a raspy voice that I would have usually associated with a person who has smoked a long time. Her daughter seemed to be having life troubles and she was checking in on her.
We were riveted. There was an investment in this relationship for us from day one.
That first phone conversation didn’t last long. It seems that ‘Ethel’ was worried about the minutes on her phone. The evenings following that first Ethel call, we kept the scanner on, wondering if the first call was a fluke or if we would hear more.
Much to our enjoyment, it wasn’t a fluke.
Ethel Conversations Continued…
It came about that Ethel would call her daughter about twice a week. The daughter lived in the Upper Peninsula. They would talk about the daughter’s job, her bills, and just life struggles. I don’t remember the daughter’s name – it’s been 20 years since we listened in on those conversations. The lady that placed the call from our apartment complex was always referred to as ‘Mom’ so we just gave her the nickname, Ethel.
It was all normal stuff, no crazy family secrets or anything like that. It was also sporadic. We never seemed to know exactly when Ethel would call her daughter, just usually sometime in the evening.
We would be home, cooking dinner in the small apartment, just the two of us and Brian’s cat, when Ethel would come over the scanner.
“Grab the scanner and bring it into the kitchen. Ethel’s on,” Brian would say.
“I got it. You get the plates,” I would reply.
Ethel became somewhat of a TV sitcom for us in those first months of our marriage.
I miss it.
The Question of Ethel & Ethics
You may be thinking that we were awful people for eavesdropping on someone’s personal phone calls. I had those same questions at the time when we were living in the apartment.
Brian and I had talked about placing a sign up near the community mailbox section with something such as:
“If you call your daughter in the U.P. in the evenings, your cell phone frequency comes through scanners.”
We never did it. I do think that the whole thing would have been worse, ethically speaking, if we would have known this lady. At least, that’s what I told myself.
We ended up buying our first home not too many months after listening in on that first Ethel conversation.
When we moved, I remember packing up and looking around at the empty apartment where I had spent only 6 months or so of my life. There was an excitement about moving into our first home, however there was a sadness with leaving the apartment behind.
We climbed into Brian’s S-10, that was loaded to the max with boxes, and left the apartment and Ethel behind.
I like to think that she’s still alive and kicking, making her weekly phone calls to her daughter.
Goals for Today:
- Bake a Pie
- Clean out Behind the Dryer
- Add ‘Police Scanner’ to my Christmas List