6. Music Lessons

Shortly before my parents were married, Mama had bought a melodeon; or, as this instrument was sometimes called, a “reed organ.” Professional organists resent the word “pipe-organ.” All organs, in their lexicon, are equipped with pipes. Hence, a “reed organ” is not an organ, at all, but a melodeon.

Mama had never learned to play on her melodeon. Her marriage, quite unexpected at the time of her purchase, brought a large helping of responsibilities which demanded her full time.

While we were living in Kentucky, she sometimes picked out a few harmonious chords, but never talked about taking lessons; nor did my sister show any interest in music. As a very small boy I began to experiment with the melodeon, and Mama often said she hoped that I could have music lessons some day. And now the time had come.

We consulted with the lady who played the melodeon at our church. She consented to give me lessons, twice a week, at fifty cents each. I went to her home for the lessons. The lady had a piano, but I did my practicing on our melodeon. By the end of summer I knew my scales in all keys. Nobody had to drive me to practice. I think I had a natural aptitude for the organ. Until that time I had heard only one real organ. A wealthy friend of the Lutheran Church in Columbia City had presented a very good two-manual organ to the congregation. The young woman who played it had a natural “feel” for it, I think. I was deeply moved; and the girl, a friend of our family, permitted me to sit close by, one day, while she practiced. It was the pedal organ that stirred me most.

I loved Mama’s melodeon, much better than the piano. The touch required by the melodeon was about the same as for the organ; and it was the height of my ambition to get to a real organ, someday.

My instruction in music was interrupted by our return to Indiana. Doubtless we could and would have gone back to Monroeville had that position been open. We went to another charge composed of only three churches. We lived in Uniondale, a small town in the northern part of the state, on the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, whose beautiful parlor-car trains, bound for Washington, D.C., paused briefly for water about one o’clock in the afternoon. We lived only three or four blocks from the tracks.

On summer days I was usually on hand, with a few other barefooted kids, to stare at the fashionably dressed people in the dining car which obligingly stopped within fifty feet of the cattle-loading ramp where we sat dangling our legs. Sometimes the people smiled and waved to us, which made me feel rather sheepish, not only because it was bad manners to stare at them, but because I had fully resolved to be a passenger on that train, someday, and didn’t like the idea of being considered a little hick doomed to spend my life watching my betters ride by in luxury trains.

I did not hold it against these fortunate strangers that they were unaware of my resolution. True, I envied them, but not to the extent of covetousness which, if my definition of the word is correct, contains a high percentage of hatred for people who are better off. It never occurred to me to despise these lucky ones.