THE BELOVED KIMBALL....LAST STOP: SPRING HILL, TN

If our old Kimball piano could talk---it'd 

have a thousand stories to tell, and many

thousand tunes to recall.

In its busiest days it played church music 

of all kinds...usually in a rehearsal mode...

gospel songs, hymns, octavo pieces,

cantatas, offertories...and then more than

that, there were the piano students who 

studied with Donna and then Mil's voice 

students.  Who could ever recall them all?!

D.'s parents bought it--used--for her when 

she was twelve and she began taking lessons.

She never looked back.

By the time I met her one summer when she

was almost seventeen, she was already a 

good pianist. It came naturally to her...and 

that fine piano helped.

When we returned from our brief wedding 

trip that cold February day in 1957, almost

62 years ago, it was sitting there on the 

south wall of our little apartment--- a

gift from her parents!

Not too long later, my new wife began teaching her

own piano students and there is no telling how many

she taught over the years until she began her public

school music career.

We were talking the other day and she figures 

some of those young girls, who have played

all these years--some as church pianists--may

be sixty-five years old by now.

I taught voice lessons to a number of young 

girls and boys---and some adults, and

that includes one trucker. Some went on to

be choir singers, soloists, and music 

teachers.

That faithful instrument was a good traveler 

and went with us everywhere, including more

than three years living in Childress, Texas---

and then twenty-four years over on Hannett

Ave. on the mesa, in the shadow of the 

Sandias.

Then D.'s parents down-sized and gave her

a second piano---this time a nearly-new

Baldwin and our beloved Kimball went to

live for a time in Texas...to Laurel Leaf 

Lane, outside Canyon.

Our granddaughter Kindell had the Kimball

there to learn on. There it rested for a dozen 

years. I personally liked it better than the new 

Baldwin.

It was loaded with memories.

But ah..you must hear the Rest of the Story....

Our granddaughter who lives near Nashville,

married last year…to a musician. Recently my

son and his wife hauled our beloved Kimball

to Tennessee in one long fifteen hour all-day

journey...Amarillo to Nashville...

It now lives in a quiet little bucolic town just

south of Nashville. A good sort of quiet

home for a fine instrument... which blessed 

the world...from the day it was made.

How's this description for a poetic home----

"LAST STOP: Spring Hill, TENNESSEE."

(Our fond memories are with you, ever.)

THE TOUGHEST MAN I EVER KNEW: MY "POP"

"His rows in life were lived as straight as his cotton rows
    which were plowed so straight, one would
       almost weep.....at their beauty......"    MIL

MY GRANDDAD..."POP"

           1889-1973

My granddad "Pop" was one of the toughest men

I have every known.

Born in East Texas during hard times on a cotton

farm...all he ever knew---was work, work,work...

Sometimes you made a crop...and sometimes you

didn't. Like all folks, you needed a living.

There was no "guv'ment,," as RONALDO MAGNUS

always called it---to bail you out.

But he was never...repeat never... on food stamps.

There was always a pig or two in the sty.

He never read a book. After all he was blind in his

left eye.

Sheltering under a tree in an East Texas storm, when

a boy, he and the tree were hit by lightning...and his eye

ruined.

I have many favorite memories of him---walking miles

behind a mule and a plow, milking down at the barn

during WWII.  Hanging washed milk buckets under

the grape arbor to air...carrying slop buckets full of

kitchen leftovers to "feed the pigs."

"Hog Killing Day," every December 26, when he gifted

every one of his kids with a pig.

Sharpening his Chicago Brand knives once again. When

he passed on, the blades were getting very thin...but were

almost certainly the sharpest knives in the world...fit

for a barber, butcher, surgeon...or a sharp West Texas

cotton farmer.

He never had a telephone or a TV, unless in his final

few years...he got a pickup finally, late in life.

He wouldn't have been a tweeter, or a texter, or

most definitely not a Facebooker, "spilling his guts" to

the world every day, making it easier for the

dossier-people.

He played his cards close to his vest.

He would most certainly have picked El Trumpus as

the lesser of two evils, tho' in those times he was an

old-fashioned Democrat.

It would have been risky for a couple of gov'ment

men to have pulled up in his cotton field when he

was hoeing his cotton and insinuate he was "a

White Supremacist."

Or called him an "ignorant DEPLORABLE."

For he was a kind and "practicable" man but couldn't

waste any time. Making a living in those early wonderful,

but difficult American times --was not a piece

of cake..

Across the rock fence from his back door every

summer he had the finest garden in that reddish

sandy soil of Dawson County. There were green beans,

black-eye peas, cucumbers, squash, cantaloupes,

watermelons, okra, tall corn, and I can't even

remember it all!

Every holiday, sometimes even in winter, the men

sat on buckets, saw horses, old chairs out by his

big garage and hand-cranked ice cream in an old

freezer....with farm fresh milk.

He had a ten dollar gold piece, smaller than a dime,

hidden in the back of the kitchen pantry...after

gold was called in. Kept in a pint jar of corn starch.

He never locked his doors, except maybe when

out if town. Not even at night.

He kept an old Stevens 20 gauge pump shotgun

in his closet, in one corner...empty...and his

son's old Cloverine Salve, 22 single shot rifle

over in his bedroom corner, by his trusty floor

Model Philco. The .22  was mainly for hog time.

Ammo for either was scarce and hard to find.

Anyway, perps  didn't hang around those old farms.

They knew better. Grand juries knew what was right

and wrong.

He rocked in his rocker, often eating corn bread

and milk ("crumble in") and listening to staticky

radio...Fibber and Molly on Tuesday evenings and

H.V. Kalyenborn for the news, every night. Fifteen

minutes worth...

His first tractor was a Farmall, bought in circa 1940

and parked under an elm tree, on his lawn.

I heard him ask my dad, one day out by that new

tractor. "What do you think of FDR?"

He wore blue bib overalls all he time, except on

Saturdays, when all the farmers in the county went

to town at noon, to get shaves, shines, and haircuts...

and then clog the side walks, on the shady side

of town. Khakis were the Saturday clothes of choice.

His legs were black and blue and dented from a

lifetime of being kicked by mules. I saw them.

Dented.

He was never much of a hugger and those folks

of the time felt their love deep like a river but

were not demonstrative...as real rivers oft run

deep.

He did hug me once or twice and I will never

forget it...he had a kind of clean earthy outdoor

farmer smell...as befitting a real human being.

So I make this memorial piece, a tribute to a

real American.....on Father's Day, 2018

He sent two sons off to fight in WWII and I being

only a kid, noticed the worry in his face, especially

at milking time...as silence fell over the land.

----------------

BY MIL

FATHER'S DAY, 2018

   ***********

(His second son, my beloved and talented

uncle, a graduate of Texas A&M and a Captain

in the USAAF, was hit by lightning on a tractor,

not  a hundred yards from the home place. My

Pop got him down and into the old pickup,

but he never made it to the hospital. He was 36.)