Time for violin practce
Brazil Buzz
By Mary Lou Sartor
We were very busy with outside work today. Now the yard looks nice and the utility shed is bursting at the seams with carefully packaged chair cushions and other patio stuff.
Now I will have more time to practice playing my violin. Maybe someday soon the Whiffenpoof song will float from its strings. I doubt, at my age, a more sophisticated piece of music will ever be heard.
Maybe, my grandfather would be proud of me for choosing his favorite instrument and remembering those special times that he entertained us on Sunday afternoons at his house.
His three daughters, Thelma, Bonnie and my mother Geneva sang and played the piano , organ and other instruments.
Their teachers taught them well.
Grandfather John Andrew Logan Siner might be looking down from heaven with tuning on his mind.
My violin came from the factory, tuned by professionals, ready to play. I did fiddle with a string. If he were living that mistake would be noticed by his ears. A little more fine tuning the instrument by someone other than me and all will be well.
Last Wednesday, I read a tribute to WC White written by his proud son Paul E. White and submitted by Patricia Wilkinson, Clay County Genealogy Library to the Brazil Times.
Mr. White was a friend of my father. Dad remembered when Clarence and Lillian came to town and went to housekeeping on Columbia Street ,in Stringtown. Dad was only eleven when Clarence came to the neighborhood and introduced to he and Lillian by the Jenkins family, shortly thereafter.
Those were the days when news traveled fast and friendships were formed to last.
Dad married my mother in 1933, at age 23. When dad paraded his new bride down Hendrix Street in a wheelbarrow, with young Adam Green, running alongside , Mr. White and dad’s cousin Frankie Harden were the first on-lookers to expressed their best wishes and shower them with grain.
It would be several plus years before my dad could afford to purchase a piano for my mother.
One day another friend of the family located an upright Hammond piano. Ten dollars and volunteer movers brought that handsome piece of functional workhorse to our living room.
At the time , I was as fascinated as much with the piano stool with the revolving seat.
One day mother ask dad if he could ask Clarence White to tune her nice as new treasure. The gifted piano tuner came out to the house, with the tools of his trade and lifted the hinged top.
This was long before dad lined the space, back to back, with trophies won by his beagles.
Mr. White listened to the sound coming from every sturdy string , his long fingers working across the keyboard , lending both ears and his expertise to the project.
Mom often told me to leave the heavy lid alone when I helped dust with Rex furniture polish.
Why else could I not see the workings of her gift? Why not ask Mr. White if I could see what I was missing?
Mr. White grinned when my dad picked me up and I saw inside. Imagine that and to think there were ghosts living in that piano that rattled the keys at night and dropped the keyboard lid below the sheet music on the ledge. Would they come out one night and I would suffocate under the heavy bedding while waiting for them to close the lid?
We sure did enjoy the music that Mr. White played that day and the tuners visit. While mom was pecking on the fine tuned piano dad paid for the service and promised Mr. White to pluck him a chicken.
And, those ghosts, I never heard them again!
I can be reached by phone at 317-286-7352 or drop me a line to 649 South Grant Street, Brownsburg, In.,46112.
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