Got no boom-boxes in the area anymore but BOOM-cars are another story, GRRRR!

Glad you did not call the police the first time out. It could be a one time deal. But if it goes on get some help to stop the noise.

Eleven is not such a late hour for them to turn it down either..especially if it was a party. We have neighbors quite a way up the road and in the woods who have a party a couple of times a year and really crank up the music. You can hear them laughing and having a good time until around midnight. But heck..it's only a couple times a year. No one around here would dream of calling the police.One time our dog disappeared for a couple of hours and came home with a big bow hanging around his neck. We think he went to the party. LOL

There are very few times I go into town I am not stopped at a traffic light next to or behind a car with their sound systems blasting so loud you can almost see the sympathetic vibrations of the car's frame. It's especially funny when their windows are closed and alls you can hear are the bass rumbles. It used to bother me until I had this flashback of when I was an early twenty-something, running late in the mornings as usual and pressing the metal to get through that little Ozark town to work. Of course I had my shoes kicked off, and the radio blasting as loud as it would crank in my little gold Mustang.

Finally I heard this tremendous shriek behind me and it dawned on me I'd better look in the rear-view mirror. It was a police siren and lights were flashing.

Into the open window the face of a very weary older member of our local police force popped and I switched off the ignition. He says "didn't you hear the sirens?" When I said no he told me he had followed me for five blocks trying to get my attention. LOL. Yes, I was speeding (just a little).

He recognised me and knew I was a single mom, and heading for work. He cut me the biggest break I didn't deserve and sent me on my way with a warning to lighten up my foot and turn my radio down. There was no way on earth I could've paid that ticket without hocking belongings or floating a loan.

I can actually grin now when the occasional deafening car rolls by because I have been there myself.

Me too Suzy. The Eagle's Take it Easy was always cranked up fill volume and me singing my head off.

I am almost rolling on the floor laughing. If you walk out to my little Red Cube, you would find in the CD player an Eagles disc. I try to tone it down in town, but as soon as I hit my territory on the country roads, the knobs still get turned up as far as I think my speakers can handle it and I still boogie down along with the music. When I have my little g'son with me, it gets played much more softly and he actually 'sings along' too with the only sounds he knows so far drifting from his car seat. "Da, da, da, goo, blah, blah" It took me a few experiences like this to realise he is singing too.

I can only imagine what goes through people's minds in town when my windows are rolled down to see a granny driving a four cylinder lipstick red cube with the speakers maxed. LOL. It puts me in mind of the commercial 'When I grow up'. It's how youth (even when it's just in the heart) celebrates.

My neighbourhood is pretty calm and quiet, most folks will turn down thier music by 10 or 12 at the latest. All but one house that is... These people have always been the ones to play thier music too loud, and all day long. This year they instaled a pool and it has gotten worse. They have thrown several parties this summer some just the teens and others just the parents, but they all have loud music, loud talking- cursing, and other obnoxious behavoiurs. Drinking is clearly involved and they start in the afternoon and last till past 2am. This is when I get fed up and shut the windows. Last weekend it was two nights in a row. Yup I have no tolerence for this type behavour. I always think that I should call the police but this really does very little, ususally the music gets turned up 5min after the cops leave and louder then before. Makes me fantasize about throwing stink boms, into the yard. I once saw a TV clip about a irrate farmer in Europe who drove a tractor loaded with manure into town and dumped a trailor full of the stuff on the property of the person he was mad at. Might get the point across....

I have tinnitus. Nerve damage due to a one-time exposure to a boom box right next to me. Since then unable to understand certain voices, hate to use a phone and am sitting in a county full of cicadas 24/7 for 21 years. Do I like boom boxes?

I've never personally had a boom box, but for several years had a neighbor almost exactly like frogged's example. We never called the police, but a friend (who lives about a mile downwind) did so several times. Around here, fines can be costly and the courts have little patience for those who repeatedly practice noise pollution.

I've never gotten a headache from boom-boom cars... but I do hope those who play their whatevers at top volume also pay an audiologist frequent visits. Onset may or may not be gradual, but the effects are permanent and irreversible.

My younger bro lost his hearing (profound deafness) after rooming for two months with someone who top-volumed constantly; the audiologist attributed the loss directly to the excessive noise. Suzi, please please PLEASE don't subject any children to the likelihood of even partial deafness.

I hoped you picked up on the sentence where I said I turned the music down. I worked most of my life around heavy machinery or guns. I have more sense that than. And most of my hearing.

Susi, common sense is how I think of you!

What I've noticed is the varying decibels folks think of as being "turned down"; my car's radio shows volume output in terms of decibels. When driving alone, I usually set it at 25 (that's a shout for those of normal hearing), several friends bump it down to 20; SIL and DD turn it down to about 15 (that's a normal speaking tone); DH turns it up to 45 db (Ai-yi-yi!). If questioned, they each explain that it is quiet enough to talk over, and loud enough to listen to...

Because the modern world exposes us to so many debilitating noises (not just jets, vacuums, or boom boxes) we should each make it a practice to have our hearing checked by an audiologist once a year.

I think that should be especially true with young adults these days. They grew up with ear plugs and loud music blaring for hours at a time. I spent years on the treadmill with loud music in my ears and have had tinnitus now for the past 15 years. About 8 years ago on my birthday my son asked me what I'd like to do...because every year we do something together then. I wanted to go to a rock concert,had never been to a real one..just folk type music. He told me I was in luck because the Grand daddy of all concerts was in Philly...AC/DC. Stupid me took no ear plugs because I didn't want to lose any of the experience and I can honestly say when we left,I was stone deaf for about an hour. I couldn't hear my son speaking to me,or any sounds at all. Scary.

I suppose most nerve damage is the pretty permanent kind, and you sure don't know it's gone until it's gone and you don't even know then until everyone else seems to hear what's going on but yourself. Would I have known 'then' what I know now, there were a lot of things I'd prolly not done but I got lucky as far as sequelae. It's almost ridiculous how protective I get around my g'kids and I get a little ribbing for it.

I think the world is entirely too noisy now and even resent how 'loud' my world has become with civilisation moving into the area when once all you could hear were nature's noises.

But when I'm alone, on a country road with nobody else to pester, I do admit I crank it up once in awhile for certain songs. Wise or not...........it's just builds up like a big zit and the music has to explode forth. ;-)