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Short Stories   Stories From a Childhood in Maine   Essays   Poetry - Haiku	More Vignettes: First Piano Lesson   A Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss   The Horse Pulling   Shame, Blame & Regret
		The Fastest Beethoven in Maine Anyone who has ever taken piano lessons as a child remembers recitals. These are peculiar events designed for parents and teachers. It gives Mum a chance to brag and teacher a chance to drum up a little business. It is not for the pleasure of the students. Let's be very clear about that. Actually if you asked them, which for some reason no one ever does, it is a form of torture equivalent to the medieval rack or at the least being drawn and quartered by large draft animals. That's where they tie a horse to each arm and each leg and have them pull in different directions. I made Annie Bradeen throw up her lunch describing this, heh heh. Imagine for a moment that you are a eight-year-old boy. You like to catch frogs in the pond, walk in the mud, and there is no puddle that shouldn't be jumped in. You play baseball, various games in the woods where there's lots of shouting and bad guy killing. You don't trust little girls, or girls of any age except your mother for that matter. You will eat anything that isn't moving and you don't understand what all this nonsense about being clean is all about. Are you getting the picture? If you are, you're obviously a real person. Who wants to be a prodigy when the faint sound of "batter, batter, batter" rings sweet and clear on the summer wind? Children, believe it or not, like to be asked about these things. I wasn't. It was decided that because I could sing very loud and had perfect pitch, I must be another reincarnation of Mozart and I darn well better get started learning to play piano as I had some serious catching up to do. I mean, think about it! I hadn't even written my first symphony! I would have called it "The Seventh Inning Stretch". Good, huh? As you may have guessed I wanted piano lessons about as much as I wanted to be kissed by Suzanne Watson, who for some extraordinarily dumb reason was determined to do exactly that whether I cooperated or not. I'll say a little more about this. It isn't particularly relevant but it is fun. In the country in Maine there was this odd medieval rite called May Day. This was a lot different than recent celebrations in Eastern Europe where certifiable madmen dig up all their weaponry and parade before a lot of long-suffering people who don't give a damn. I have since learned assorted pagans also celebrated this day, some running around the woods naked, painted blue, and others winding ribbons around a pole in the middle of the greensward. They call it a May Pole by the way. Author aside: There's probably some deep, complex Freudian insignificance to all this, which if I gave a damn, I'd think about, but who wants to listen to the maunderings of people who torture rats and humans for a living? Nothing but over educated, over-paid druggists. This May Day in Maine thing was celebrated in the following manner. Young girls, who should by God have known better, and who plainly didn't have sense enough to come in out of the rain, made up decorated baskets and filled them with candy and other such seductive trifles. Their mothers were usually hand-in-glove with this ritual. There was even a certain amount of competition about the esthetic values ascribed to said baskets. You won't be surprised to learn that eight-year-old boys do not share the excitement and pleasure of this zany seasonal weirdness. Anyhow, back to Suzanne, who by the way grew up to be so beautiful that she caused fifteen or twenty car wrecks a year. New Yorkers who came up to Maine for the cow and horse-shooting season (deer hunting season), would gawk at her as they drove by and wreck instantly. For reasons too complex for my eight-year-old brain to grasp, Suzanne decided that I was the object of her affection. This being the case, the next step was to "hang" the May Basket on me. What she had to do was catch me and put the thing in my hand, and then she could rightfully claim her prize…a kiss. Peeyucckkk!!! Can you believe that I had been ordered by my mother not to run too fast? Was this some strange method of childhood subliminal training, a predisposition that was to be useful later in life? I leave it to you to figure out. As I didn't really understand this game, and wasn't a willing participant, I ran very fast and wore poor Suzanne to a frazzle. She sat on the sidewalk in front of the Odd Fellows hall and wept bitterly. I left in my usual state of confusion. Her mother called mine and ranked on her about what a wretched, thoughtless little boy I was. Passing the Mill Pond, and seeing that the fish were rising, I forgot all about it. I arrived home only to receive a half hour's worth of serious, "you are a mean little child," talk. I felt pretty bad for two or three hours after that. I wish I had known that Suzanne was going to grow up to be so gorgeous, I wouldn't have run so fast. Fair is fair, when I chased her in my teens she made sure I didn't catch her. Where was I? Right, musical prodigy from back woods of Maine gives up little league baseball for a career as a pianist. Do you believe that? If you said no, this is good. You will probably grow up to be somebody. So I had four or five lessons. Fortunately they were so traumatic I can't remember anything about them. What I do remember is that I was picked…right, every one of her students were picked, and fifty percent of them were from my family, to play in the recital. My middle brother Bob had endured a year of torture and David, the eldest, had been at it for two or three years…or longer. I know for a fact that Bob wanted to play in that recital about as much as he wanted to eat a plate of boiled turnips and squash. David must have had astonishing perseverance. He was playing Beethoven and Chopin, even stuff by a French guy who wrote a nice tune about a lady horse called La Mare. You understand I couldn't just knock the dust off my baseball cap and go play in a Recital. I had to "get ready". I had to be clean…I had to take a bath. I did not go willing into that good night, I went dragging my heels, kicking and fighting all the way. A fella has to have some standards. My mother, however, had superior skills and was a lot bigger than me. My scrawny white little body was made pure. If you see some similarity between this and ritual sacrifice, you are probably an educated person. Vis a` vis nothing whatsoever except bathing, I once asked our bald-headed minister who had bad breath and an extremely loud voice, if I had to be bathed in the blood of a lamb…religion can involve real terror. I was not given a satisfactory answer and worried about it for a long time till I figured things out for myself. I was to be put before the people of the town like a prize apple pie at the country fair as an example that Missus Ladew was a good mother and a good Christian woman. I put on a pressed pair of pants and a white shirt, and that horror or horrors, a tie. The tie was invented to remind small boys what would become of them if they didn't eat their squash and go to church regularly. I would much rather have expressed my religious preferences on the ball field. I did that quite often actually. I distinctly remember saying, "that God damned guy can hit the ball a mile", with considerable religious fervor. It was a colored noose by the way; calling it anything else is gilding the lily, period! You may have noticed that there wasn't a lot of logic being applied. I was told to do a lot of things I hated by someone I loved. I was going to have to get up in front of a bunch of people I barely knew and certainly didn't talk to and make a total dork of myself. It is probably true that I spent a lot of time being a "bad" boy, which must have been why I was being forced to do this awful thing. Far as I can tell Saint Augustine and the entire panalopy of Saints couldn't possibly have been "good" boys. You figure it out, I can't. I mean, how good could I play after four or five lessons? I remember it even now; the song I was supposed to play had something to do with a swing. Miss Fanny Jameson had marked big square letters over the notes bringing instant relevance to my genius. I was an excellent reader. It does not, however, follow that I would be able to connect those letters to some mechanical part of the piano. Only older brothers and other such savants could do that. So there we were, the three of us lined up in a row in front of my father for inspection. This is not a joke. My father was an ex-marine and hadn't lost the joy of watching people, my brothers and me, stand at attention for hours and hours and hours. Think about it for a moment. How many healthy children do you know can stand at attention, except under duress, for more than thirty seconds at a time? Author Aside: I have since learned that psychiatrists created Ritalin and Prozac so little children wouldn't display all that disgusting energy in front of certain poor depressed teachers who detest energy in children. First they very cleverly called that energy "Attention Deficit Syndrome". Clever huh? If you name the thing you make it real for those who don't think and then you can "treat" it. It was the marketing coup of the century. You have to create a demand if you want to sell something. Eli Lily be proud! I read somewhere recently that one of those idiots "discovered" that puppies have "Attention Deficit Syndrome" and that forty-six drug cartels have started multi-million dollar research programs to find a cure for this heinous disease. Wandering again there, sorry. Anyway, inspection was passed. We were not found wanting. We were loaded into my father's Mercury and driven to the town hall, Odd Fellows Hall, Saturday afternoon movie theater. We went around to the back to the stage entrance; read back door. My mother and father went to join other parents; all of who were impatiently waiting for their sons and daughters to display genius…call that obedience to dire threats, please. A little honesty wouldn't hurt. Inside, Miss Jameson was making ready, preparing the way as it were. It's amazing how much so-called art is preceded by mystical nonsense. The girls played first. They seemed pleased and they were extraordinarily clean! We stood around outside waiting. Very boring. My brother David casually pulled out a plug of Redman chewing Tobacco and got out his pocketknife…a Barlow. I lusted after that knife. Now as far as I know my brother David did not chew or smoke tobacco. He cut off a sizable chaw and stuck it in his mouth with nonchalance worthy of Joe DiMaggio coming to bat in the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium. Well, I had to have some of that tobacco more than I needed to draw my next breath. "Can I have some?" I asked. "Nope, you're just a kid." I am the youngest of three brothers. Call it fate, the luck of the draw, whatever you like, being the youngest is not a good thing. You get crapped upon regularly, have to wear someone else's clothing long after they have worn them out and you get called kid a lot. If you don't think this sucks beyond belief, you don't know zip! But, I had determination and I was not easily put off. "Common, don't be a turd," I said, "Let me have a piece. If you don't I tell Ma." Leverage is a wonderful thing. Of course if I did I would probably get my ass kicked so far up between my shoulder blades I wouldn't see light for decades. But sometimes it worked. "All right, here", he snarled. He cut off a monster plug and handed it to me. He apparently never read that bit in the bible about, "a willing giver be." I had been watching him carefully. He chewed that tobacco and spat every five or ten seconds. Spitting is important. No, I'm not going to explain this. If you are a girl just get used to the idea that there are some things you weren't meant to understand. There are certain things a boy must absolutely master if he is to have any status among his pals. Spitting with power and accuracy is one of them. Author aside again: Here's another one for the "Man is Mud" boys to ponder. Gonna be a real disappointment to them that spitting isn't sexual at all. Of course these are the same people who think that Space Mountain at Disneyland is a phallic symbol, even wrote a "learned" paper about it. Pardon me while I giggle. Anyhow I wanted to get that plug going so I could do some power spitting of my own. I don't know where Bob, that's my middle brother, was: Being good probably, heh, heh. I have a confession to make. I will make it here 30 or 40 years later; precision is not required in this sort of prose, everyone knows that. That tobacco was burning my mouth terribly and I dearly wanted to spit it out and rinse my mouth from the nearest hose. I could not do that. Real men will understand why. So I chewed nonchalantly and I spat with style. Miss Jameson came to the back door and said it was my turn to play. I promptly threw up a perfectly decent pot roast, green beans and mashed potatoes. Yeah, yeah, got it, more than you needed to know. I also fell to the ground groaning and hurling like a dying person. I was, dying that is, I was certain of it. I have since been in three car wrecks, been stabbed, fallen off a serious cliff, blown up, shot at repeatedly, in more serious fistfights than I can count and broken eleven bones in my body. I was never as sick during any of those events as I was in back of the Odd Fellows Hall in Cornish, Maine the year I was seven years old. Fanny (you have to love that name) ignored me and hissed at David. "You will have to play." She wasn't that sensitive to my imminent demise. Well, I was not aware of it, as I was still lying on the ground dying, but he was also getting as gray as the slate on the fire station roof. I heard about this second hand and wished deeply that I had been there to see his moment of great courage and terminal disgrace. Mother says he ran onto the stage and instantly began playing Beethoven's Für Elise, that's "For Elsie" in English. It is normally played at a moderate tempo. David, however played it at accelerando tempo, muy rapido; that's Italian or Spanish for quick I think. Yep, that's very fast. That's blindingly fast! I was also told that he played every note, every single one. Following the last note he left the stage like a man with a rocket engine in his hind end. Beethoven, be proud! It was also related to me that he began throwing up slightly before he reached the wings. Now we're talking really disgusting stuff here…we're talking about monster ignominy, disgrace, shame…and, lest you think anyone was sympathetic, the anticipation of severe punishment to come. This was as certain as snowfall, apple stealing, and the Boston Redsox inability to win a World Series. Here is something that all children know. If you screw up badly in front of your parent's peers it is a direct reflection on their competence as parents, not your own stupidity and poor judgment. There we were; Eldest and youngest, on the ground dying when my mother and father arrived. It is a testament to my father's intelligence that within five seconds he had correctly ascertained the source of our illness. I remember his voice clearly. "Stop blubbering, Harriet. They aren't going to die, yet! They have been chewing tobacco." "What!!!!" she screamed. I didn't get it of course. It wasn't like she had just been told that her children were ax murderers. "Robert, you take your belt to those boys this instant." Thanks, Mom, for your tenderness and understanding. For a change my Father didn't do that. He was probably sensible enough to realize that taking his belt to two boys who were deathly ill was entirely inappropriate. Being shot behind the ear like a sick horse would have been a great kindness. I wish I hadn't been sick. I wanted to hear David play the fastest Beethoven in Maine. I could have said something worthy, like, "Now that by Judas, is Beethoven!" But it is very hard to be witty when you are throwing up on your pressed pants and being strangled by the demon tie. There's probably a moral of some sort to this story, but for the life of me I can't think what it is. I certainly haven't felt any pressing need to take up chewing tobacco over the years, which is probably a good thing. I don't think pretty girls kiss guys who have tobacco juice drooling from the corner of their mouth a lot, but they do get to play professional baseball, which makes up for it and then some.
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