We gave our piano away in March. We gave it to a young couple with a little girl now four years old. They have been living across Connecticut Avenue from us for about a year or more. So when I decided it was time to give up the piano June suggested them. It was a great idea. When the Mom, Tia, came over to look at it she remarked that she had had piano lessons as a child but since they could not afford a piano, she had used a keyboard. We learned later that Madison is already tinkering with it and Mom is encouraging her to learn.
The piano came down with us from Dorcas Street in Philadelphia. We had purchased it sometime in the 80’s and we used it at the condo in Avalon, N.J. The decision to give it away came in degrees but basically it started when I no longer had the opportunity to play at nursing homes or Assistant Living places. The result was I practiced less and thus had less enjoyment. At different times over the past years I played at different Assistant Living places and even at the Church’s Fellowship hall during our Wednesday night dinners. I played the most at the nursing home and rehab center just a few blocks away in Shore Acres. It was called the Shore Acres Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. In the year 2004 having spent a great deal of time up north I lost the opportunity of playing at Shore Acres Nursing home. The activity chairperson had promised that she would call when she thought she could fit me in once again. But 2005 passed without a call. Thus followed the failure to practice and the loss of interest. Then when I suggested we might give the piano away June had another great idea. “We’ll get an easy chair and a light and you’ll have a place of comfort and light where you can sit and read” After some deliberation and regrets I decided it was the right move, so we gave the piano away.
A piano has been in my life since childhood. We had a big black upright in the sitting room at our home on Baltimore Avenue in Philadelphia. My mom played and some of my older sisters. When Mom played sometimes we would have a song fest. We would sing parodies to old songs with words that would apply to the person we were honoring or celebrating with at that time. I had an opportunity to learn to play the piano while I was in grammar school. But I turned it down in favor of spending my One-Dollar allowance on going to Boy Scouts. Being a Boy Scout enabled me to go to summer camp on Treasure Island with them for a week in the summer. In those days a week at camp seemed much more important than learning to play the piano.
The next time I thought seriously about a piano was in 1952. In the spring of that year my Mother suffered another heart attack or stroke which incapacitated her. My eldest sister lived in a house with her children and husband just some six or seven blocks away. She was over at our house constantly taking care of Mom. Eventually it seemed better to have her move Mom to her home and so it was done. My Dad went along and the house on Baltimore Avenue was empty except for me. I was in my first year at Penn Law School and I could ride a trolley or walk to the school. The empty house made the piano an object of attention. I slept there studied some there but I think most of the other time I was the manager of the College Students’ Community Center or having a meal at my sister’s home. I recall starting to take lessons and I think one of my sisters, a nun, maybe Mary, who was teaching nearby was my teacher. I struggled with the lessons and practice. Somewhere along the way I heard someone play who had what was called a “Fake” book. I learned that it was a method of playing where the left hand instead of playing the music written for it, played the guitar chords written above the melody. It was not a method by which to play classical piano pieces. I didn’t mind giving that up. I got a book to teach me and so I began. The melody could be played with one finger or you could spread your hand and play the note with one an octave above. It was aided by a bit of sustaining pedal but the secret of really sounding good was your rhythm. There were some songs I felt comfortable with but a good many of them I could sense I wasn’t somehow in sync. But I liked the idea of hearing the song so I persevered.
In the summer of 1952 to continue my learning I made a deal with regard to a piano with the Wurlitzer Company. I was going to spend the summer in the hew house of Marge and Dan in New Jersey. They had only recently been married and were beginning a new home. The deal with the piano was you could rent it for three months at twenty-one dollars and it was expected at the end of the term you would enter a contract to buy. The rent became the down payment. The idea was that after three months in a home with apparently someone playing it, there would be an incentive for buying. So I had a piano for three months in Marge and Dan’s new home. But picture this! A newly wed couple moves into a new neighborhood and a new house. Shortly after that they have a piano delivered, no one of the usual furniture needs of a new homeowner. The neighbors must think these kids are well off if they can afford a piano. So imagine the talk and thoughts when several months later the company comes and takes the piano back! In fact it was more than three months since I think they didn’t get around to picking it up until nearly November. I had left to return to Law School in September.
Mom was conscious off and on in those days of the fall of 1952. I’ll always remember her lamenting ‘there goes Paul from pillar to post’. I was the only one of her fourteen children not working at a vocation so she lamented like she hadn’t finished the job. My two younger sisters, Anne and Rosemary, had been launched. Rosemary became a Holy Child nun and Anne married Bob Lukens. Bob was the brother of my college buddy Jack Lukens. So I was the only one unsettled and thus going from ‘pillar to post’. I remember her also in one of her conscious periods asking Dad about the house in Bryn Mawr, a classy area on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia. She wanted to know if he had gotten the house yet. He told her he was still working on it. I asked my Dad about that question and learned that way back they had talked about moving to such an area, but as the years tore by and children arrived, the hope to move vanished. Or maybe it just vanished for Dad, since Mom was still hoping!
After Law School the piano had to take a back seat. I had been drafted to serve in the Army under the existing Selective Service Act. I managed to get a deferment to finish college and then to attend Law School. Fortunately for me the Korea War was over by the time I graduated from Law School in 1954. I beat the draft since I managed to qualify as a candidate for a commission in the Marine Corps. So after taking the Bar Exam in July (which I flunked!) I was off to Quantico, Virginia and the school I was commissioned in October of 1954 and served until November 1958 when I resigned my regular commission. A piano came back into my life in 1958 when we were living in an apartment at the Philadelphia Naval Base. We had three rooms and a fairly large living room. My Dad was at that time the Executor of the Estate of a Doctor Rose. She had been one of the earliest female doctors in U.S. and had done very well for herself. I remember going to her home to see a piano Dad said he would give me if I wanted it. In the foyer there was a water fountain and carved statutes and all around of course was stone! It was a large as the living room we had in the apartment. I took the piano, which was a Baby Grand Steinway with registered numbers on the inside of it including the year and place of its being built. It took up almost the entire living room in the Apartment but we were planning about that time to leave the service and had put money down on a house in Foxchase, a section in Northeast Philadelphia. Before we moved I made another deal with Wurlitzer. I offered to give them the Steinway in return for receiving a new upright. I not only got the piano but some cash besides. So a piano was now back in my home. I recall that it gave our daughters an opportunity to learn to play but I think only Suzanne did so. I began practice a bit again and when I seemingly got my business time and the like in sync I began playing at a neighborhood nursing home during their lunch hour.( I mentioned playing in nursing homes to some who then cracked,” Guess you never got any standing ovations?)
Someone once said, “Memoirs are modern Fairy Tales!” Recently there was an uproar in the media about someone’s memoir. It became a best seller after being discussed and plugged on the Oprah Show. Apparently it turned out to be more ‘fairy tale’ than fact. As in any Fairy Tale all the bad things that happen to the main character are overcome and there’s a ‘happy ending’. Well I can’t really say this jotting is a memoir but I do know it isnot a fairy tale. As best I can recall I recorded the facts . I can assure you that there is a happy ending as I sit in my lounge chair. I enjoy the comfort and light to read and no longer feel guilty about not practicing the piano. I am happy too since I believe the piano has found a loving home.
Until next time, Pax tecum!