In my quest for a favourite recipe — which I know just has to be in one of the binders that I carefully started in order to keep clippings and columns in some sort of archival order — I found not the recipe but some musings from another decade.
In this particular column from 2010, I was eloquently describing my musical career in a local accordion band and how my parents bought me the best accordion on the market at Assiniboia Music, located in those days on the northern end and west side of Main Street.
The salesperson was knowledgeable in all things musical and when she made her recommendation, my parents got out their cheque book and the family walked out of the store with the best money could buy.
In addition to the price of the instrument, they paid for weekly lessons, drove here and there for performances and endured hours of what must have been excruciatingly awful practices, timed to not interfere with the television news and CHAB broadcasts of the away games of the Canucks and Pla-Mors.
I surely did not fully appreciate their sacrifices and the costs associated with my obscure dream of being another Walter Ostanek who made those accordion keys steal the show wherever he performed. During his career he became known as Canada’s Polka King and won three Grammy Awards out of 21 nominations.
My world stage included the community’s Christmas concerts, an appearance with the band at Music in Colour at Zion United Church, guest performance with the band at the Verwood and Scobey, Mont. fair parades and programs, regular concerts for residents of Valley View Centre, being part of the band that won the CHAB summer talent contest three years in a row, and other assorted low-key events.
I was amazed to learn recently that a professional American accordionist can take home about $157,000 in annual salary. Jumpin’ Jeepers. Wouldn’t my parents have been happy to see their offspring bring home even a few dollars to go towards some gas money. It was not to be.
Fourteen years ago, I confessed in a column that my accordion was languishing in its case, never having seen life outside the velvet lining for more years than I cared to recount.
After reading excerpts from 14 years ago I am reminded how fast time goes by and sometimes, how little has changed.
I am shocked, first that 14 years have gone by, and secondly that I have shamefully not done anything musical with my accordion in all those years. The closest I have come to it is wiping a bit of dust off the case and browsing through some music books and sheet music that I religiously collected, thinking that one day I would sit down and run magical fingers over the keys and chords to produce music like no one had ever heard before.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s the kind of music I produced in those early years when I know neighbours groaned and then shut their windows when I took my practice time out to our back yard. The alley, I know, was soon cleared of stray cats. I know that because my uncle once told me so.
I do feel guilty about my musical lapse but a busy life intervened, and then semi-retirement provided me with extra hours with which to do other things unrelated to musical rehearsals.
I do look often toward the grey case, the music stand, the boxes of music, and think perhaps I should seriously get into my music again. But I would have to find The Palmer Hughes lesson books for the student just starting to learn the instrument to help me recollect how to finger the chords and how to put together a simple song from the first lesson.
So, in the autumn, when it is still warm enough for windows to remain open, I hope the neighbours will forgive any noise they might hear coming through the open window of our house.
It could be yours truly trying to finger my way through an unusual rendition of The Accordion Polka. Or indeed, it could be a tomcat howling in terror as it escapes the sounds of what is supposed to be The Colonel Bogey March.
Joyce Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
