When first we moved to this town, we were a little surprised when the air-raid sirens went off.

Now, I know nobody else calls those things "air-raid" sirens. Usually "Civil Defense" sirens, or even just "Emergency Alarms". But I remember "Duck and Cover" in school, and those things will always be air-raid sirens to me.

But anyway, when we moved here those things went off every Sunday at noon. Which we learned was a weekly test of the system. A system that the town used to call all firemen when there was an actual fire.

They also went off the first Wednesday of every month at 17:45, to call the firemen to their monthly meeting. I always wondered what would happen if a fire started at 17:45 on a Wednesday. Or Sunday noon. Would anybody come?

Was always fun, especially in warm weather, listening to all the dogs in town start howling at the same time.

But in this era of modern communications, firemen are now called via beepers. No more alarms on Wednesday evening.

And they changed the system test of the sirens to Friday at noon quite a while back. Don't remember why, but suspect it was so the guy testing the system wouldn't have to work on a weekend.

I remember a year or so back reading in the town minutes about an upgrade to the system. To allow voice warnings in addition to the sirens. Since the September attacks, they have actually added a voice message to the test:

"Attention please. This is a test of the emergency warning system of the town of [Grouseville}."

Two things annoy me about this, and I was reminded of them just over two hours ago.

First, don't people know what town they're in?

Second, and this is really irritating, is the manner in which someone (I think the Chief) taped this damn message. As in:

"Attention... please... This is... a... test... of the... emergency... warning... system...of the ... town... of... [Grouseville]."

Note the mechanical, 1970s-style robot speech there. This cannot be a fault of the voice recording system. It handles several small words together in a normal speech pattern just fine, as well as the multiple syllable words of "emergency" and "Grouseville". Whoever recorded this was just a dolt, that's all.

I have been listening to this same robot speech message since mid-September, on every Friday I have been home.

It's been a long winter. Either I or the neighborhood speaker may not make it to spring.