Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: September 14th, 2014

Well, I was no singer, but at least could play the piano and that had to count for something. Not only did we sing the old tear jerkers, but we sang a lot of the folks songs dating way back including things like the Steven Foster songs, and then songs of the twenties and thirties that pop had played when he was part of his band in Marcus, Washington. Bob started playing the piano when he went to school, but he hated it. Louise also was given piano lessons but she did not like it either, both of them stopped after a lot of heart wrenching with the folks. After that the folks said nobody would have to take piano any more and that was that, but Dory when she was in about the second or third grade decided she wanted to take piano and so I gave her lessons. She was my first, my only, and my most successful pupil. She got pretty good at the piano, too. I do not know if she ever took piano lessons from anybody else or if pop gave her tips, but anyway, she got so she could play the old songs and Christmas carols and so was the family pianist after I left home. We had the piano from Grandma Wilda and later the Keizers gave us a pump organ with organ roles. We loved those organ roles. The organ was huge and gradually, the living room started to sink under its weight. The organ rolls at the time, though, were really fun. But as was always the case in our family, disaster struck, this time in the form of the twins, Ann and Angela. They would get into the rolls, essentially ruin them while playing with them, one would destroy one roll, while the other kept watch. When the folks finally got rid of the organ, the rolls were all shot, due to those two.

But while we had the organ, pop wanted to get a family band going, and so Bob would play the organ, I played a small accordion that pop had gotten from some place, pop was on the violin, and Louise played the drum. Every time pop tapped his foot, she hit that drum. It must have been an awful sound, but mom, dear mom with her tin ear, thought it was wonderful. But we had to give that up. The sound must have been terrible, Bob did not like it, Louise was not too good at it either, she banged that drum when pop tapped his foot but sometimes got a little anxious and banged it anyway. Besides, the drum went the way of all our other stuff, eventually it had a hole in it, my accordion bit the dust and we went on playing the piano. Bob would sing with his lovely voice, Louise was a good singer when she was young, too, and we would all have a good time, I on the piano, pop on the violin, and pop and I often playing together. It was nice.

When I was in the fourth grade, I was considered to be pretty good, I was accompanying the choirs of the younger children at Saint Monica’s School, i.e., the third and fourth grades, and so one time in early May, the priest from Holy Redeemer parish in North Bend came out. I remember, there was no school that day, pop was working, mom was home, and the priest suggested that I be the church organist for the 8:30 mass. I would start in the summer, pick out my own hymns, all that sort of thing. That priest must have had a tin ear himself, can you imagine a fourth grader doing that? But mom, bless her lovely soul, felt that I could do it just fine and agreed to it on the spot. Mom thought that was a great privilege. Pop came home and was horrified, but it was too late. So he got on the phone to the music teacher, Sister Bertilla was her name, and explained the situation to her and we spent the rest of the school year getting me ready to play. Later when my favorite music teacher came along, Sister Ernestine Marie, I got some good help, but in the mean time, I got ready. I did not have a big repertoire, but that church organ was a little thing, a pump organ, it had five stops. I did my best. I played for communion “O, Lord, I am not worthy” so often that I finally asked the teacher the next year if there wasn’t another piece that would work. During the school year, we had a choir director for the children’s choir and I would play for that. When I got into high school, we got a regular, electric organ and so I was a church organist until part way through my senior year and then a real musician took over.

But pop had a way of making sure that I never got too much of a big head. I thought that I was doing fine with music, but ahead of me, there were three girls who were excellent, Mary Ann, my future wife, Joan Hansen who later was a church organist in Portland and on the music staff at Marylhurst University and Jaquina Hillstrom who with her husband started a popular jazz night club in San Francisco, the Purple Onion. But that was in the future. I knew that I was not in their league, but I was moving up. One day, the Megales came out to our house and pop loved to hear Mary Ann play. So, he asked her to play and Mrs. Megale thought that I should play, too, so Mary Ann came up with the idea that we would trade off. So, she played a piece, and then I played a piece, and then she played a piece, and I was about to play a piece and pop said, “enough of that, I want to hear Mary Ann play”. I was in favor of that. I knew she was a lot better than I was and the fact that pop put it so bluntly did not particularly surprise me.

I took piano lessons until I was a junior in high school. After I finished practicing, we would often have a sing along, not every night, of course, but often. We did enjoy that and as the younger children got older they participated, too. They would often have favorite pieces. We gradually put the tear jerkers out to pasture, although we continued to sing “Silver Threads Among the Gold” which was not much of a tear jerker. The cowboy songs were also gradually phased out, but the popular songs were there and so many of the old favorites. We sang them all at the time. Music was part of the household. It was just natural.