As everyone leaves for vacation and the sensory feast of summer reaches its full ripeness, I stand outside and BOOM. BZZZZZZBOOM. BZZZZZBOOM. BZZZZZZBOOM.

Excuse me. Perhaps we should go indoors, where the sound of car stereos will be very slightly muffled by masonry.

Actually, I find the sound of ordinary car stereos, wafting through the open windows of passing traffic, a welcome sign of spring. You hear it on that first day when you can roll your windows all the way down, the first day the sunlight on your skin actually feels warm. You hear the music and you know that it's only going to snow two, maybe three more times, tops.

By midsummer, it's too much of a good thing. Some bozo playing scream-rock wants to idle under your window for half an hour. And then there are music lovers who don't even need to open windows because their speakers can be picked up on seismographs in Japan.

The city council of Detroit just amended its noise ordinance to target anyone whose music can be heard 10 feet or more from his vehicle. I think every city should have an ordinance with a distance clause, and it shouldn't be limited to car stereos. Sometimes I can identify the band playing in someone's headset from 10 feet away.

I don't want to be able to hear your breathing, shoes or chewing sounds from 10 feet away, much less a stereo. I'm also wondering if we can pass an ordinance fining anyone whose perfume, cologne or B.O. extends beyond a 10-foot perimeter.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to silence summer. What would the season be without the lifeguard's whistle, the bangs of fireworks, the chugs and muttered curses of your neighbor trying to start his mower?

And no trip to the beach is complete without the cries of gulls, the roaring waves and the squeals of children throwing a bucket of cold seawater on a dozing parent.

To me, part of summer's appeal is its soundtrack. Winter is a quieter season: no bird songs, no rustling leaves, no thunder. Kids come out in their yards to build a snowman, but you don't hear them because your windows are shut tight in a futile attempt to keep your costly heat in.

The rumble-jingle of a passing snowplow is comforting on a cold night, but the rasp of ice scrapers is just depressing, and the angry whizzing of stuck wheels, if it continues, starts to sound like a furious and unusually stupid bee trying to bore through a brick.

This is about the time in the summer when the sounds that made you so happy the first time or two you heard them are starting to grate a bit. It's a good time to start closing the windows and letting the AC provide some soothing white noise.

When I was a kid, the major sound at night was crickets, and the only downside to leaving windows open was the disturbing sound of moths twonging against the screens while I tried to catch up on my summer reading list.

There are sounds you learn to tune out. I grew up near tracks, and a passing freight is like a lullaby. Church bells and street sweepers just make me roll over. But the early-morning recycling collection goes through me like a bolt of lightning: Before the sshhSHSHCRASH of glass has been followed by the PLUNK of the dropped bin, I have brained myself on the headboard and sucked half a pillow into my lungs.

When you wake up like that, you know things can only get better. Provided you don't kill anyone before lunch.

If I manage to get back to sleep after the recycling truck, the garbage truck provides my snooze alarm when it drives into my bedroom and makes that earsplitting HRRRRRRRNNNN noise. I have my eyes squinched shut in agony, but I am sure the truck is no more than a foot or two from the dresser. I play dead. I wish I weren't playing.

Lately, I awake to jackhammers in the alley. Also roaring, beeping heavy equipment. I'll tell you, if you think you're tired of your deck-building neighbor's power saw, you ain't heard nothin'. I have no idea what they're doing back there, but I fantasize about finding out where they live, borrowing the local ice cream truck and laying a little "Turkey in the Straw" on them about 2 a.m.

Ah, summer.