In early days bells were a familiar part of the Hannaford scene (or rather the Hannaford sounds, that is). School bells, church bells and curfew were so regular and dependable in their performance that people set their clocks by them. School bells called to class and curfew warned kids to scat for home at nine o'clock. Church bells invited the faithful to regular hours of Lutheran and Presbyterian worship.
Only the fire bell sounded off without any schedule. Its sudden harsh clanging, day or night, shattered the peaceful air and sent every able-bodied man rushing to help douse some neighbor's misfortune.
For funerals the church bell slowly announced the time for final blessings and again began tolling slowly and mournfully as the hearse left the church and continued until the procession wound its way into the cemetery grounds a mile from town.
In the later 1920s, Oscar Westley, an enterprising business man, used a novel means of attracting customers into his movie theater located in the old Claus Jackson store building. For free admission some teenage boy would go around town carrying a hand-type school bell, ringing it vigorously, then silencing it two or three times in each block to yell, "Movies tonight! Eight o'clock!" No one in town was beyond the reach of that clarion call.
Memories of the sounds of Hannaford bells moved one former resident to sound off lyrically:
(After re-reading The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe.)
"Bells ...bells...bells...bells;"
Their tintinnabulation swells
Only in realms where memory dwells.
No bell rings daily now at Nine
Commanding pupils into line
As at that old school house of mine.
How wistfully I am aware
That Sunday call to praise and prayer
Is missing on the morning air.
Wild sirens wailing never quite
Start me from slumber with such fright
As fire bells clanging in the night.
A time was I would not believe
Bells could be silent Christmas Eve
And as the Old Year takes its leave.
Hushed are the echoing refrains,
Sleigh bells, dinner bells, bells on trains;
Only the memory remains.
What stilled their singing? Who might know?
Where are the bells of long ago
That stirred my heart ...and that of Poe?
Norman R. Boe
Source: Hannaford Area History North Dakota Centennial 1889 - 1989 Page 256