The church bell rang on Sunday morning and the whole block knew what time it was. You did not need a clock. You did not need a phone. The bell told you. Nine o'clock. The old women in black were already on the sidewalk walking to mass. Ten o'clock. The families came out. Eleven o'clock. The stragglers. The church bell organized the neighborhood the way a factory whistle organized a town. Except the factory whistle said go to work. The church bell said go be forgiven.

Every church had its own bell and its own sound. St. Brigid's on Avenue B had a bell that cracked sometime in the fifties and nobody fixed it and it rang with a buzz like a broken guitar string and everybody on the block loved that sound because it was their sound. The church on Second Avenue had a bell that sounded like it was apologizing. The one on Fourteenth Street had a bell that sounded like it was giving orders. You could tell which church you were near with your eyes closed.

I am not a religious man. I never went to church. But I listened to the bells every Sunday for forty years because the bells were not about God. The bells were about time. The bells were about the neighborhood agreeing that this moment right now is different from the moment before it. The bell rings and the street changes. People walk slower. Cars quiet down. For one hour on Sunday morning the block pretends to be a village. And maybe pretending is enough.

The church bell was the first public address system. Before there were loudspeakers and amplifiers and megaphones there was a bell in a tower and it reached every window on the block. No electricity. No microphone. Just bronze and gravity and a rope that somebody pulled. I played concerts in the park and I could not reach the back row without a bullhorn. The church bell reached twelve blocks without trying. That is engineering. That is also faith.

The bells are quieter now. Some churches took them down. Noise complaints. Some churches closed. The congregation moved to Jersey or died or stopped believing or started believing in something that does not ring a bell. The ones that still ring — you hear them on Sunday if you are standing in the right spot with the window open and the traffic light red and the garbage truck on the next block. For ten seconds you hear it. And for ten seconds the neighborhood is what it was. Then the light changes and the truck moves and the sound is gone and Sunday is just another day with better parking.