by Peggy Rowe
“Look who’s visiting from Baltimore!” somebody said, as though they just found out. Of course, they had known from the minute our car rounded the bend into Fleeton that Thelma Williams had come home with her family.
Mr. Harding’s store was more fun than any carnival (well, except that there were no rides). I could never understand why Janet chose to play with a friend when she could be here. Across from the mail slots was a display case filled with a selection of penny candy that would rival any Woolworth store. Roosting atop the glass case was a red hen, clucking softly. While my father talked with neighbors, I stared at the assortment of candies, deciding how to spend my pennies. When the time came, Mr. Harding slid the glass doors apart and shooed the hen from the countertop.
She made a terrible fuss squawking and flapping her wings and sending up a storm of dust and tiny feathers, some of which settled quietly onto the candy below. It didn’t matter. Mr. Harding always blew it off.
After some agonizing decisions, I cupped the small bag of candy in my hand and reached inside. Dad smiled at me as he pulled a list from his shirt pocket. “You’re going to save some of that for your sister, right?” It’s hard to hear when you’re chewing.
And this is the funny part. When Dad pointed to some spools of thread on an upper shelf, Mr. Harding shooed a black and white chicken off of an enormous block of cheese that sat on the floor like a footstool. The chicken was complaining loudly as the storekeeper stepped onto the cheese in his old boots and retrieved two spools of thread. My mother would have complained even louder than the chicken had she been here. I was glad that cheese wasn’t on the list.
Grandma raised everything we ate, and our meat was mostly seafood and ham. She bought her milk down the road.
“It tastes funny,” I said, every time I drank it.
“That’s because it isn’t pasteurized,” Grandma would say. “It’s pure—right from Miss Douglas’s cow!”
Most of all, I treasured those precious hours on the screened-in back porch swing as we watched for Grandpop’s fishing boat to come around the lighthouse. Grandma could tell at a glance if he was coming in with a full load.
“Lawsy!” she would exclaim, throwing her hands in the air. “She’s low in the water!”
My grumpy grandfather was my least favorite person in the family. But Grandma sounded proud when she described him as the best captain in the fleet.
“The other captains gather on our lawn before they go out to ask Charlie where the fish will be running,” she said.
I loved my grandmother and the hidden girl within. Her excursions into the past as she shelled butter beans stirred my imagination. When I learned that she’d ridden to school on horseback, I envisioned her galloping at breakneck speed along the country roads beside her brother, Malcolm. Grandma’s greatest sorrow was that my Aunt Cornelia had been whisked away by her husband to a faraway land called Nebraska. She lifted her apron and wiped away tears whenever she talked about her.
My grandmother’s favorite topic was English royalty. She spoke of kings and queens as though she knew them all personally, reciting dates from memory. I heard Dad tell Mom once that Grandma was better than a sleeping pill. More than once I was carried up the steps to bed while she was talking.
Horrific nightmares of an ax-wielding, blood-spattered old lady chasing chickens across the yard, itchy mosquito bites, and painful jellyfish stings were a small price to pay for such idyllic vacations.
Facing the Music
I was eight years old when my mother bought a second-hand piano and started calling our small den the music room. She loved referring to the music room as though it were the conservatory or the drawing room. None of our friends had music rooms.
“Honey,” she said to my father after dinner one evening. “Would you help me carry the radio to the music room? That’s really where it should be.” It was a big Zenith floor model that took up a lot of space. The next day, she brought the record player downstairs from my sister’s bedroom and put it beside the radio. Then she talked my father into building some shelves for our records and music books. They were beautiful and sturdy, and, as usual, Dad turned pink when Mom thanked him with a kiss.
The music room was just off the dining room, and before long, our family was introduced to fine dining—with Strauss waltzes playing softly in the background, lacy tablecloths, candles, and linen napkins. Dad even changed from his work clothes and used the nailbrush before dinner. The houses on Leslie Avenue were close together, and some evenings Mom left the curtains open to give the neighbors a glimpse of “civilized dining.”
On Saturdays, Janet and I were forced to listen to live performances from The Metropolitan Opera while we did our chores. Mom would read a synopsis from Milton Cross’s little opera book beforehand and provide a running commentary as I did the dusting and Janet mopped. Dad hid out in his backyard workshop on Saturdays.
I knew just where to place the blame for the cultural revolution taking place in our house—squarely on the shoulders of the Overlea Lions Club.
It all started that day my sister and I came home from school and found a strange black truck parked in our driveway. Janet saw it first.
“Look, Peggy,” she said, “that truck has our name on it!” Sure enough, printed on the sides was, KNOBEL ELECTRIC COMPANY. Mom was waiting for us on the front porch.
“Your father is an electrical contractor, girls!” she said with a proud smile. “He’s a businessman! And I’m his secretary and bookkeeper.” Nowadays, her title would be CEO.
Despite Dad’s seventh-grade education, Mom had seen great promise in him all those years ago and told us regularly, “There is nothing your father can’t do.” She didn’t have to convince us.
Janet said that, with Mom’s ambition and Dad’s skill, the business was bound to succeed. And Janet always knew what she was talking about. I hoped she was right. Maybe then we could afford a pony.
Shortly after becoming a businessman, Dad started going to dinner meetings on Thursdays in our church’s basement.
“Your father is going to join the Overlea Lions Club. It will be good for our business,” Mom told us. “The other members are businessmen too.”
Joining the Lions Club expanded my parents’ social circle, which had previously consisted of our church family. Their new friends enjoyed entertaining and travel. The wives were the type who went on garden tours and had season subscriptions to the Baltimore Symphony. Dad was active in the club’s civic projects, while Mom loved getting dolled up like a movie star and going to dances and banquets. I hardly recognized them when they left the house—Mom in an evening gown and Dad in a bow tie and cufflinks with clean fingernails.
One evening they were invited to a dinner party at the home of a prominent local builder. The next morning at breakfast, Mom’s eyes sparkled like the silver service on our buffet as she relived their big night, interrupting herself from time to time to tell me to get my elbows off the table and chew with my mouth closed.
“After dinner their two daughters played beautiful piano duets,” she said. “Such delightful girls! Such refined people!”
It was shortly after that evening that my mother bought the piano and christened our small den the music room.
In the evening, she would sit at the piano for an impromptu recital. She could only read notes in the treble clef, so, while her right hand played the melody, her left hand free-ranged like the chickens in my grandmother’s backyard, pecking the bass keys at random. Houdini had nothing on my mother, who could make an entire family disappear just by sitting on a piano bench.
In December, The Blue Danube gave way to The Nutcracker and The Messiah. As Christmas approached, Mom smiled in a mysterious way. Could it be? Was this the year my prayers would finally be answered? Every year as my family sat at the Christmas Eve service awaiting the arrival of the Messiah, I sat beside them awaiting the arrival of a living, breathing pony. And now, my spirits soared as I pictured Misty of Chincoteague grazing
in our backyard. Perhaps the tomboy galloping around the neighborhood had awakened some maternal compassion in my mother.
My excitement peaked on Christmas morning as I followed my sister down the stairs and saw our parents standing beside the tree. I was wearing my cowboy boots and homemade Dale Evans cowgirl skirt in anticipation.
“Merry Christmas!” they said, moving aside so we could see the gifts Santa had left for us.
“Look!” Mom said, pointing to the empty dish on the coffee table where we had left the cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. “I guess they were hungry.”
Of course, we were way beyond believing in Santa Claus, but it was part of Christmas. And if they wanted me to believe that it was Santa who had brought my pony, I was more than happy to oblige.
“Look at that! Just a few crumbs left,” said Janet, as I flew past her to the kitchen, and threw open the back door.
“Peggy, you’re letting the cold air in! Come see what Santa brought,” my mother said.
Sadly, maternal compassion took a backseat to culture that Christmas. Instead of finding a furry pony grazing on the back lawn, my sister and I reached into our stockings and found—wait for it—vouchers for piano lessons.
Janet was delirious with joy. “Gee, thanks! Joanne takes piano lessons! I’m going to learn to play as well as she does!”
My father beamed as he always did when Mom was happy. I wanted to jump up and scream at the top of my voice, “If we can afford piano lessons, we can afford a pony!”
But it was Christmas, and the magic of the season hung in the air. Besides, disrespect was not tolerated in our family. There was no negative karma in our home. My sister and I did not argue or fight, and we had never once witnessed a harsh word between our parents. If they disagreed at all, it was in private.
Our piano lessons commenced. With eternal optimism, my mother delivered her two musical ambassadors to the Elmwood Music Studio every Tuesday afternoon. The Overlea Lions Club had a lot to answer for.
At home I practiced roping the trash cans in the backyard to the melodious tones floating from the music room where Janet was practicing her heart out. Tuesday afternoons found me stumbling over the same beginner exercises week after week. Ms. Shiffler’s wooden piano bench was a cruel alternative to Misty of Chincoteague.
While my sister played duets with our teacher, I slipped outside and played kickball with the kids on her street.
“I’m no good at playing the piano,” I reasoned with my mother. “I hate it! You’re wasting Dad’s money. Please, can I stop?” Her response was always the same.
“Playing the piano will give you an appreciation for music . . . expose you to culture . . . make you well-rounded . . . blah, blah, blah.” So, I plodded on, unaware of the disaster that loomed on the horizon.
Mrs. Shiffler broke it to me gently. “Every spring our students come together for the annual recital, Peggy. They memorize a piece and play it for their parents and guests in a church auditorium.”
“No thank you,” I said (in my most polite voice).
“Oh, it’s lots of fun. We get dressed up, and there are special refreshments. We have a good time.”
“I don’t think so. But thank you.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind. Just in case, we’re going to learn this piece for you to play. It’s called ‘From a Wigwam.’ ”
I would soon learn that participation in the annual recital was mandatory. It was a ritual of enhanced torture and right up my mother’s alley.
She squeezed her black treadle sewing machine into the music room and supervised my practice while she worked on our performance dresses.
My public debut was the stuff of nightmares, thanks to the “no sheet music” rule. Sitting at the piano in my new Singer creation before a packed auditorium, I could scarcely remember my name, much less the opening measure of the piece I’d been forced to memorize. After staring down at my hands until I was cross-eyed, I looked up and saw my teacher. “Here you go, Peggy,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Let’s just get you started.” She placed my fingers on the correct keys. It reminded me of the time my mother couldn’t get our car started and Dad put some cables on the battery.
Janet played “The Happy Farmer,” and people couldn’t believe she’d been playing for only six months.
The abyss of my recital career came the year my mother resorted to psychology. When I finished dressing, she called me in to her bedroom.
“I have something for you, honey,” she said, opening her jewelry box. “You know that I’m not superstitious, but I wore these beads last month when I gave a speech to the women of the church. I didn’t make one mistake, and everybody complimented me!” She fastened the strand of beads around my neck and turned me to face her. “You’ll be good! I know it!”
Before leaving I used a black marker to draw the opening notes of my song on the palms of my hands—just in case the good-luck beads didn’t work.
I waited for my turn with that all-too-familiar paralyzing feeling of doom, twisting my mother’s necklace until it broke apart and vanished down the front of my dress, one cool bead at a time. Minutes later when my name was called, I meandered to the piano with black marker smeared across my face and new dress. With every step, beads bounced on the linoleum floor around my feet, like hailstones on Grandma’s tin roof. Adults laughed while children raced into the aisle chasing down the rolling beads like they were diamonds and rubies. I made it through my piece with a few minor mistakes and as I left the piano, Mrs. Schiffler spit on her handkerchief and wiped off the keys. At least my mother could brag that my performance had been entertaining. The audience loved me.
That year Janet’s piece was “By a Blue Lagoon.” She played the flowing arpeggios and cascading chords like a seasoned musician, looking like an elegantly dressed doll, the kind you’re not allowed to play with.
My favorite compliment came from my father, whose dread of recitals equaled mine.
“Hon,” he said to me, “I’ve never heard you play better!” Everybody knew that Dad was tone-deaf.
And still my mother ignored my pleas to stop the lessons, even when I suggested she take piano lessons in my place, which would have been a gift to the entire family.
“Someday you’ll thank me,” she said.
If only my teacher had been cruel, hitting me over the head with a metronome or screaming at me. But try as I might, I could not dislike this kind, motherly teacher who must have known from the beginning that I was a lost cause when it came to the piano.
Three good things happened that summer: my sister substituted for our church organist and Mom got to sit on the front pew looking proud. The prominent local building contractor and Lions Club member awarded the contract for a sprawling new housing development to the Knobel Electric Company. And last—I was doing my Tarzan impersonation, jumping from the picnic table onto the clothesline pole when it snapped, and I fell to the ground with a concussion and broken clavicle. While on the surface this might not sound like a good thing, my arm was in a sling, and I had four long, glorious weeks before I could play the piano again. So intense was the pain.
I’m reminded of those lessons often and of my mother’s promise that I would thank her someday. She was right, of course, and I think of her when I play the piano at church, especially that Christmas Eve I accompanied a soprano in a catastrophe-free performance of “O Holy Night.”
My three sons benefited from the music in our home. My insistence that they take piano lessons had paid off. My mother, who lived next door, watched with delight as I hunted them down like little fugitives at lesson time screaming, “Playing the piano will give you an appreciation for music and expose you to culture! Someday you’ll thank me!”
Miss Blevins
Miss Blevins had a reputation for being a character—a really fun teacher. It was a well-earned reputation, as there was always laughter radiating from her room. One day when I was taking the scenic route back to my classroom from th
e lavatory, I ran up the steps to investigate the riotous racket.
Through the small window in the closed door, I could see a boy standing at the front of the room with his arms stretched out to the sides. A closer look revealed that he was standing on one foot like the flamingos at the zoo and balancing a blackboard eraser on his head. It was like a circus act I’d seen, except that this performer wasn’t on a tightrope and he looked sad.
That should have been my first clue, but I was naïve and believed Miss Blevins was a special educator like Miss Milton, the librarian. The library was my favorite place in the whole school, and I had read every horse book on the shelves. Miss Milton always gave me a heads-up when a new one arrived. She had seemed as excited as I was about the latest—a complete book of horse care and riding.
“Look, Peggy,” she’d said, leafing through the book. “Here’s a diagram labeling the parts of the horse—withers, croup, pastern, cannon bone.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had memorized them years ago, as well as the parts of a saddle and bridle. But the section on the diseases of a horse alone was well worth the purchase price.
When I received a letter saying that I would be in Miss Blevins’s fifth-grade classroom, I did cartwheels all the way across our front lawn. Even my mother seemed pleased at my good fortune, which shocked me. She was more a fan of the clichéd, ruler-wielding schoolmarm.
“Maybe a dynamic teacher like Miss Blevins is just what you need!” Then she said something about how a vigorous teacher might awaken my dormant potential. Mom had graduated at the top of her high-school class and knew a lot of big words. She frequently referenced her own teachers when imparting life lessons to my sister and me.
“Mr. Collins might have been strict, but he taught us that there’s nothing more important than an education.” Or, “Miss Corsa always did say, ‘My best students are not necessarily the brightest, but they are the hardest workers!’ ” Mom had expectations for her two girls. They would behave in a ladylike fashion at all times—and be superior students. Janet excelled in both categories, but it didn’t take long for teachers to size me up as “nothing special” when it came to academics. In our house teachers were gods, and that was that—a reality that brought me daily stress. By the end of September, the jury was still out on the plump teacher with the big blue-gray hair and colorful dresses. Perhaps my expectations had been too high. Aside from some intriguing facial tics, she had provided little in the way of entertainment. Maybe it just took her a while to warm up to a new class.