Not so quiet.

I think I mentioned in my last post that the house was strangely quiet for this time of year. We had two events just days apart the ended the quiet. One occurred around 4 pm , still in the old year. A house shakingly loud crash that had the wife and I both thinking a ceiling had caved in. A thorough search of the house disclosed nothing amiss. A thorough search outside and around the house also disclosed nothing amiss. Our neigbors heard nothing though they were at home at the time. This isn't really surprising, I guess, as noone in this town ever hears anything but gossip. When we moved here in 1979, we hadn't been in town but a few weeks when the local fireworks factory exploded killing at least one worker. The explosion shook the house and rattled the windows. When I tried to find out what happened, no one heard a thing. Headlines in the local newspaper the next day had them all wondering why they hadn't heard it. We were just turning in one night, between midnight and 1 am when a second thunderous crash occurred. It shook the house, the dogs were going nuts. Again I checked the house from stem to stern and found nothing amiss. The next day I checked outside and found everything ok. A neighbor suggested that a piece of ice must have fallen off the roof. I don't think so. In the first place we had had very little precipation. A thin snowfall gave us a more or less white Christmas and then it turned unseasonably warm. I had a new steel roof put on the house this past summer and ice off the upper roof landing on the lower roof would make a lot a racket, however nothing sticks to this new roof, its slicker than ice even in dry weather. Theres no place for ice to build up. There was no sign of ice on any roof nor on the ground. As you can see, asking my neighbors if they heard anything is a waste of time. They are all deaf to loud noises. There is no obvious explaination and will probably remain so. Old houses in old towns are such a mystery.