In the days before smart phones and watches, what often brought communities together was a sound.
At the turn of the 20th century, an agreed-upon time was often essential for getting up and going to work, attending church and having meals on time.
It was a sign of civilization.
And although clocks were often commonplace in stores and homes, some clocks ran fast, others too slow — and some, not at all.
That is where the town whistle came in.
The siren sound could be invasive. It was loud, and its sound could be heard for miles out in the country.
Even now, it is still a sound that unifies small towns across the state.
Each weekday morning in St. John, Kansas, the early birds are often awakened by the rousing sounds of the town whistle, which doubles as a tornado siren in bad weather.
“The first time I came here and heard the whistle,” said Mike Rosseau, who moved to St. John with his wife, Dorothy Tobe, in July 2023. “I had been sleeping the first couple of nights in the empty, dark church by myself.”
Rosseau was not aware that a town whistle existed — except as a storm warning.
“Come Monday morning at 7 a.m., the siren went off, and my response was, ‘What the hell is that?’” he said. “When … we were still in Denver and had told everybody we were going to Kansas, all we had heard for weeks was ... ‘Oh, there are tornadoes out there.’ Well, when I got here, nobody told me that there was a siren or whistle that would go off … so I thought there was a tornado coming in at 7 o’clock in the morning.”
No doubt, the siren “whistle” takes a little getting used to.
In Abilene, Lucas, Geneseo, Bennington, and other Kansas communities, the whistles are a symbol of rural Kansas. Some started more than a century ago — before Central Standard Time, and long before digital clocks or cell phones. At first, they signaled the town’s arrival to keeping pace with civilization.
Now, for many rural Kansans, they are nostalgic, a sense of time and place … and tradition.
In the town of Greensburg, the whistle has another meaning. Their town was struck by a devastating tornado on May 4, 2007.
“We have had a town whistle for … a long time prior to the (2007) tornado,” said Stacy Barnes, Greensburg’s city administrator. “It was something I remember growing up that blew at 7 a.m., noon, 1 and 6 pm. And especially for us kids, growing up, we knew the 6 o’clock whistle was when we needed to come home.
“In 2007, our sirens were all destroyed, and we were down for a time … That was something that quite a few people in the community wanted (to return) as a sign of normal.”
In Greensburg, there were a few allowances made. The daily town whistle no longer blows at 7 a.m. Now, it’s at noon, 1 and 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
“In the days with technology and smartphones and watches and all the things we use, do we still really need to have it?” Barnes said. “The community feedback was on the side of, ‘We want to keep it.’ I’m thinking back to my childhood when we didn’t have (personal electronic devices), and it was a way to keep track of where we were and what time it was.
“It’s definitely a rural community sort of identity thing. It’s unique to a small community. We’ve had visitors come into the Big Well Museum — visitors from all over the world — and when that whistle blows, they hear that … and the look on their face is ‘Should we be concerned?’ Nope, it’s just noon, it’s lunchtime.”
For some, the whistle is like an old friend offering a signal that time is passing.
Kennie Clark, owner of Clark’s Barber Shop in St. John, has been located half a block from the town siren for 61 years.
“It never changes,” Clark said. “So whenever something happens and it doesn’t go off, and there’s a glitch somewhere … then you kind of wonder, what’s wrong, you know? So, you do look forward to it.”