So this year's Hallmark Keepsake Ornament Dream Book did pop up a few days ago, and in the wonderful way of memory, a page was turned, and a memory showed up, this time in a plastic reproduction like the one above right.
Let's cue that calendar photo montage and go back, back, to fifty years ago on the clock, when Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were shiny coins in the vault of television, and a bunch of fifth graders tumbled through the glass-paneled classroom door in one morning to find something new.
I'm not sure what the deal was. As I understood as well as a ten-year-old can, the Hammond Organ people were, as a magnanimous gesture all about getting more music in the classrooms (read in adult terms: tax writeoff), giving one of their home organs to a fifth grade in each school. I can't remember if we knew it was coming, but one morning there it was in the corner of Mrs. Grady's classroom, near the teacher's closet where she kept her coat and her supplies, a shiny brown piece of furniture with white and black keys and multicolor tabs and slides (the latter called that we learned were called "stops"), plus pedals below, with a bench, and sheet music, and even a set of headphones so a child could practice and not disturb his/her classmates.
Naturally we didn't get to step right up to the beast right away. At next music class we were supplied with paper keyboards, so we could learn where middle-C was, and how to make the common C, G, and D chords with our left hand. When Jane Trahey talked about playing "silent piano" at New Trends High School in The Trouble with Angels——a.k.a. Life With Mother Superior——I knew exactly what she was talking about. Unlike Trahey, however, we eventually graduated from the paper keyboard to the real thing.
First came the "baby" songs, with limited notes that trained the fingers in their positions and simple chords—C to G, and back again—and everyone's ears echoed the monotonous "Merrily We Roll Along" until we could play it in our sleep, and then we each graduated to more complicated pieces.
It was a happy hour if you were released from your studies to practice on the organ. You sat squarely on the bench, your feet dangling down to press the long grey pedals that supplied the bass, your left hand in a tilted claw over lower C (or G, or F), and the fingers of your right hand dancing in (hopefully) graceful motions to make the melody. With the headphones on, you were in your own little musical world—which could turn embarrassing when the teacher padded over to you, regretfully to touch your shoulder and remind you not to sing aloud as you practiced. Our lessons didn't touch at all on the stops, but when I had those private practice sessions I learned that if you manipulated them it changed the "voice" of the organ, and eventually I memorized a setting that made the organ sound almost like a harpsichord.
In the late spring a recital was planned from the ranks of the virtuosos, and would be presented not only to other students, but to the parents.
I was a shy doe back then, one who hated being conspicuous. I feared speaking in front of the class, even when I knew backwards-and-forwards the subject I was speaking about (the history recitation that Laura Ingalls Wilder has to do in Little Town on the Prairie would have made me mute with terror). My voice would tremble, I would stammer, my knees would knock, and my heart would have put Trini Lopez's hammer to shame. When we did the sixth grade Christmas play, Mrs. Shaw was sympathetic and kept me behind the scenes, choosing the actual story we were to perform and prompting at rehearsals. But Mrs. Grady was made of sterner stuff and wanted all children to learn to be comfortable making oral presentations.
Mother claims that I did not know I was going to have to perform in the organ recital, and that my voice showed real surprise when I had to step in front of that "huge" auditorium audience—at least I had a list I could look at and clutch in damp fingers—and announce the performers. If I was indeed surprised, I was doing the best avoidance of reality ever, because Mrs. Grady even had the organ wheeled into her office to listen to our recital practice sessions without bothering the other students, and before the recital I was in there practically daily. I was struggling with "My Wild Irish Rose," which had a wicked D-major (or D-minor, I forget) chord somewhere in the third or fourth verse. This was not a child-size organ, but one built for an adult, and I could hardly stretch and twitch my hand into the extended claw that was required to perform the maneuver. She had me play it until I hummed it constantly, and when I hear that song in my head, to this day I hear it in the jerky cadences I gave it sitting up on the wooden stage, half blinded by spotlights, trembling with every movement.
Mom and Dad toyed with buying me an organ, but the price was prohibitive and there was no space in our tiny Cape Cod for another piece of furniture, unless it was one of those tinny "table organs" that sounded like the organ grinder's monkey was trapped inside it. Plus, I really preferred reading, writing and drawing to the thought of weekly lessons and practicing an hour every night. I think I might have disappointed my godmother, who was a keen pianist and whose lovely music wafted out of the open windows of summer evenings.
So the musical portion of my education finished, but on this spring morning the Hallmark catalog brought it all back for one more encore.
