“Come-and-Get-It” Prairie Dinner Bell

If you’ve ever watched a classic Western, then surely you’ve heard this sound, the comforting rapid ring of a Cowboy Dinner Bell (you can play the sound below). A strangely beautiful cacophony that evokes the image of a dozen taciturn cowhands, driving their herd over the expansive prairie. Made of blacksmith-forged steel, the “bell” is composed of three pieces: an 18″ hanging bracket, a 15″ tall triangle (with a curvy, spiral flourish) that swings free off the bracket by a leather thong, and most important, the 15″ clapper, that you rattle around inside the triangle for as long as you want. The cook rings a bell exactly like this and the cowboys gather around an open flame, scooping stew from tin plates with Dutch-oven bread, washing it down with wood-fire coffee black as night, while one of them blows a harmonica to beat back the endless sweep of lonesome prairie. Go ahead, call your own cowboys and girls in – the sound carries – with this rustic piece of classic Americana. You’ll be the only one to have anything like it.