Making Music…At Last
By Louis Foshay
Bloomsburg, PA
Being 67-years-old and looking back to my early childhood, I now see just how hungry I was for music. My earliest memories include songs heard on the radio, and how they made such an impression that many of the songs continue to surface in my mind to this very day. I had a small metal piano, which was given to me by my godparents. It had no keys, but rather a slider that positioned over a note printed on top and when pressed, produced the designated note on an internal xylophone. It used two batteries to make the hammer vibrate when the slider was depressed. Batteries cost money and so that instrument wasn’t used all that much before being stored in the attic. Those same godparents gave me a harmonica in my early years, but without any way of learning what to do with it, I obviously made noise for which I was reprimanded. So ended my contact with music with the exception of radio and later as a teenager with a phonograph.
In grammar school, the music teacher auditioned my class. I’m not sure how students were chosen to be worthy of learning a band instrument, but I was not one of the lucky ones to be chosen. Looking back I sure wish I had been chosen, but at the time, it didn’t seen that important.
My cousin who lived on the other side of the fence and was a few years older than me, had his own band, and I would go to sleep on summer nights listening to him and his band practicing. I longed to play and sometime in my teen years I got a guitar but, again, there wasn’t any instructions available to me. Even tuning it was a challenge to which I don’t believe I ever got quite right.
In my early twenties, the desire to make music grew stronger. At that time, I started an electronic repair business and ended up repairing musical instruments of every description. Some of my work came from the local music store. During that time I bought and traded electric guitars and then acoustic guitars for I so wanted to play music. I felt too self-conscious to take lessons and so the instruments were as those before, just something to dream over. Years later, my wife and I moved to Pennsylvania and music kept calling to me. I bought an old fiddle, which of course I never learned to play. But I did learn to build a couple from scratch, which I later sold.
My wife, Madeline, was working for the local university and decided to take piano lessons as one of her perks. We bought a keyboard and when alone I would hunt out portions of songs by ear. That amazed my wife. During those years that followed we acquired other keyboards and acoustic pianos. In her classes she learned some songs as well as reading music and, also, learned music theory all of which to one degree or the other. I learned some from her as well as from sheer determination.
Then it happened. We were at the Bloomsburg Fair and spotted the Keyboard World tent. After a lengthy demonstration and some very convincing talk, we bought a Kawai CP150 digital piano. My wife was now entitled to ten free lessons. However, she was discouraged upon visiting the Keyboard World store and learned that the lessons were on Lowrey organs. It was a year later that she spoke to one of the sales staff again at the fair who convinced her that the lessons on the organ would help her on the digital piano. So, she signed up for lessons as the store moved even closer than it had previously been. I sat on the sidelines and watched and watched and wished I had the nerve to be directly involved in the classes but as previously stated, I simply was and continue to be too self-conscious to play or learn with others. I continued to sit in on the lessons while my wife took the lessons. It has been seven years that we make the trip to the music store on a weekly basis. It is now more like a club and has been for years but it is also educational at times.
I remember those early days so well. Seeing my wife’s class laughing and having so much fun. Oh, how I wished to be an active part of the class, but instead, I resolved myself to buying a low-end digital piano for my very own. As time passed we traded up and eventually we traded up to an organ. Several more trades were made for bigger and better organs until we had the top-of-the-line in our house. If it wasn’t for the stores trade-in policy, we never could have afforded the Stardust organ. My wife always was partial to the piano but the quality and features of the Stardust has changed my wife’s feeling toward the organ. Recently, we were invited to the unveiling of Lowrey’s latest organ. Wow! Was it ever impressive! Because of the demand for them, there is a waiting period of about two months before one can be delivered to anyone ordering one. Guess what? At the time of this writing, we are impatiently waiting for the organ to be delivered.
Music is indeed more than a hobby to us. It is a personal recreational music making as literature claims. It keeps a person young and is good for the brain to learn and stretch above and beyond what it thought possible even when one is a senior citizen. I can testify that playing has improved my mental powers allowing me to do things on the organ, which I never could. Likewise, it has fed the hunger for music that never went away.
