About my love of music and my piano...

Blackie's on the keys
He taps and bats the ivory
as if he's coaxing a song
I try to pick out a melody
but I seem to get it wrong
Grandpa comes in the driveway
and here comes Ethel too
Ethel looks down at me
and says,

"I'm here to teach the piano
To you!"
Barefoot Contessa I'm not;

Barefoot and
Messy I am
Whispy hair; dirty blouse
Bruised knees - grubby elbows
But I politely say, "Hello, ma'm"...
Out come 3 books; Hanon and the
Red Book "A"
A funny booklet with 5 lines real thin
One half hour to learn;

$1.50 to pay
My legs dangle from that enameled piano bench
I stare at these funny black blots on the page
Ethel's talking; pointing here and there
Pretty darned smart (I tell her she knows a lot)
...she first answers me with a penetrating stare...

Then she chuckles softly;

that strange look still in her eyes
Then she says skill comes from experience
and the older we become

we get ever so wise!
She moves to my first assignment - 3 pages to learn
C-scale;

up and down, over and over
so an excellent grade I will earn

She bids me good-bye; I know I will try

I'll work really hard - I'll not dally or sigh

I'll be a 'pianist' one day...all my friends I will tell,

but then
two days later my dad starts to yell!
"Do you have to play that damned thing
today?"
"Stop singing those lyrics 'this is up, this is
down'...
...can't you go outside and play?"
Lucky me, it was harvest time
Dad spent long hours in the field
Mom worked in the garden
And for every song I played well
Grandpa paid me a dime
I learned all the songs in that Red book
In one week; proud of me, yes sir-ee
Got the C-Scale 'knocked'; went to
the F-Scale and what's this
Tic-tac-toe thing
very puzzling to me
Mom called Ethel; she said wait 'til
I come
I called up grandma, and told her
I thought that was dumb
Well grandma agreed; told me what to do
"Better yet, let me drive out, and show
that sharp to you...."
So, a brand new book to start my second week;
The Schaum's Blue one
and of course I have to peek
all the way to the end; again I explore
and by week 3,

Ethel said,

"Marie, we need
one more...."
Now it's the Orange book - I'm going through
"C";

faster and faster, now two sharps on my scales
Before I know it

I'm in book "E"
"F" is for the hard stuff;

then I learn Chopin
Mozart; Beethoven - oh how they challenge
my tiny hand-span
Glizzando - trill; arpeggio
and away I go
Chords and Occidentals
Thirds and triplets (my I'm getting good)
Then Ethel gets sick;

no more lessons will I have
But I just keep studying

because I knew I could
Now I play for Sunday School
Then the Glee Club's next for me
The Follies; I'm teaching
My first student; my second
Then I'm up to three
I'm 17; I'm excited - 10 students to learn (as I did)
I hardly remember that time long ago
when I was a wary, scrawny, kid
A kid with dirty finger-nails
A child who heard my cat on those keys
A bit of a Tom-Boy with flying hair
Ever curious, and with scrubbed-up knees.