Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: September 7th, 2014

When mom was growing up, the family liked to get together in the evenings and sing. Grandpa Joe loved to sing and had an excellent voice and our Aunt Louise was also a good singer. Grandma had learned to play the piano at Valley Catholic, then called Saint Mary’s Academy. She was actually pretty good. One of the first big purchases that they made was to buy a piano. That piano followed them to Coos River from Arago and then out to our place in Kentuck Eventually, Sister Dory got the piano and she and her children played it for years. It was destroyed when her house burned down. But at any rate, the family would gather around in the evening and grandma would play and grandpa and Louise would sing and mom and Uncle Dick made up the audience. Mom never had a good voice and never sang, Uncle Dick had quite a pleasant baritone voice, I was surprised that he was part of the audience. They played all the old popular songs of the era and many of the folks songs from back when. One of the songs that mom remembered was “The Wreck of the old ’97”. It was a typical song of the era about a railroad engineer who was involved in a train wreck and was “scalded to death by steam”. It ends with the admonition to all wives to be good to their husbands because they may leave and never return and mom said grandpa would knowingly look over at grandma and nod his head.

Eventually, when we got our own family together, I would play the piano and we sang a number of those old songs including that one about the old ’97. But we sang the old tear jerkers, too, like “The East bound train was crowded”. It is about a little girl who doesn’t have a ticket but is going to see the governor to bail her blind father out of prison, then there was the song “Hello, Central, give me heaven” about this little girl whose mother had died and she misses her and since central knows everything, she wanted central to connect her with her mother and tell her how they miss her and maybe she would come back. Then there was the song about this fellow sitting in the saloon and his daughter comes to get him, she comes several times, they have no heat at home and the little brother is dying, but he is too hooked on demon rum and doesn’t come and the song closes with the little girl telling him it is too late to come home because the little brother has died. Another one was about this woman who had fallen on hard time, “She’s somebody’s mother”. We still know “Bury me not on the lone prairie” and then there was the cowboy song, “When the works all done this fall” about the cowboy that is going home to see his mother whom he has not seen in years, but she is a good mother, but then he gets killed that very evening when the cattle stampede. We tended to close with “Silver Threads among the Gold”. All of these songs are out there on YouTube. Tear jerkers were the name of the game, but we eventually got away from them, from all except Silver Threads. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Grandpa in his younger years had belonged to various church choirs. He still belonged to the one in Myrtle Point. They never rehearsed so I have a bad feeling about how they sounded. Still, they did sing and mom wanted that in her own family and at least while I was at home, we had that.

Pop was himself quite a good violinist. He was very talented, had had good teaching when he was growing up and wanted his children to have a good musical upbringing. So, after the folks moved out to Kentuck, grandma gave them her piano and I started piano lessons in the first grade. I can still remember my first piano lesson. I was quite excited. The teacher first told me the names of the notes and how they sounded and that sort of thing and then at the end of the lesson, she taught me a piece. It went like this, you can play it easily: c-d-e; e-d-c-d-e-c. Now that piece has words that go with it: Going up, going down then a skip. Play that for your parents, she said, they will be delighted. So, I proudly went home and after supper that evening the parents asked me how school went and how the first music lesson went. Well, I said, it went very well and I even learned a piece. So, I went to the piano and played my piece and pop said, Get out of here, that is a stupid piece. That confirmed my worst suspicion. I had known all along that it was a stupid piece. Pop never pulled any punches, he always said it like it was. But I liked the piano nevertheless and worked hard on it. Less successful to me was another experience. We had something called a rhythm band when I was in the first grade. This band was made up of first and second graders. The big shot boys stood in the back row at the ends of the row and played big drums. Now the two little shos, Austen Clinton and I stood in the front row and we had stupid little triangles to play. What a come down. I do not know where the sisters got the musical instruments, but they all had them, there were drums of various sizes, smaller than the ones of the real big shots, horns, trumpets, flutes, fifes, you name it and we had it, and then there were the two little shots with the dumb triangles. To top it off, we all had blue capes trimmed in pink and stupid hats. It was the low point of my musical career and it happened to me in the first grade at Saint Monica’s School in Marshfield Sigh. But I made good progress. By the end of the third grade I had gone through a number of books and could play pretty sophisticated things.

My singing career never got off the ground in grade school, though. My voice changed early to a baritone and there is no place in a children’s choir for a baritone. The poor nuns did not know what to do with me. When I was in the fourth grade, we sang Christmas songs for the radio, it was a big deal, but what to do with me. So, in the end, since the school was part of the Saint Monica’s parish and I was from Holy Redeemer in North Bend, I was excused. Brother Bob on the other hand had the voice of an angel, truly a wonderful voice. It was the prettiest voice in the school. He was in the second grade and it did not bother anybody that he was also from the Holy Redeemer Parish in North Bend. So, they put him right next to the microphone where things had been set up to do the recording and later on the radio, you picked out his voice just perfectly and it was beautiful. As it turned out, after that I accompanied the choirs in my grade and a couple of grades under me so I did not have to sing. I thought that was just fine and I thought that Bob should have been featured with a voice like that. To be continued.