My older sister took piano lessons in our house and we had a Winter upright. I can remember we had a blind man who tuned it once a month. He was a very nice man, he had a driver that would not come in the house no matter what the weather. I never spoke to the driver. I don't know if he was anti-social, or if he did not like pianos or did not like me! My older brother played trumpet. When I was nine, the fourth grade classes all went to the music room, we were shown instruments and we were able to hold them and try to make sounds come from them, french horn, clarinet, flute, kettle drums...I picked up a 3/4 violin. I felt it would be easy to make sounds come from it. All you had to do is move your right arm. Wind and brass instruments seemed pretty tricky to me. I told my dad that I would like to play the violin. That weekend he bought me a very nice 3/4 violin. I was VERY small, and even the 3/4 was a bit large for me. I enjoyed playing, I used to solo the songs from the Suzuki book when we had recitals. But I wanted to play with the band. Or just a couple of other instruments. We were always separated, just strings, about 20 violins and a few each of viola, and cello. If someone made a mistake, you did not know who it was, and many people just faked it. You could tell when a lot of people did not practice a new piece....it was very hushed, it sounded like three violins playing. We would warm up playing scales and songs we knew well, it was pretty loud, as we got to the more complicated newer songs the volume dropped, but you still saw the bows keeping time. The school had violins for rent, these were pretty beat up, I always felt uncomfortable with my shiny perfect violin in a beautiful hard case with emerald green velvet. I felt everyone should have a new violin.

Thank you Fiddlerman! I have not thought about some of these things in many years.

I speak a small smattering of Spanish. I had a young apprentice lineman on my crew who looked like he was Mexican. His father was Mexican and his mom was German. We call him Germex. His father would not let him learn any Spanish. He did not want his children to speak English with an accent, I admire the dad but at the same time, Billy is missing a huge part of his heritage. There were many times we would be working near tree trimming crews and many crew members were from Mexico and other Central and South American countries. They would see Billy and just start a conversation with him in Spanish, he looked so embarrassed. He would hold his hands up and say, "No hablo" The only phrase he knew.

Wow, I am such a chatterbox today!

Dave