Every child needs a hero. If you played the piano as a child, your heroes were probably Elton John or Billy Joel. If you played the guitar, your role models might have been Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. I played the accordion as a child. I had few options for heroes and the sexiest one was a Lawrence Welk show regular: first name, Myron ; last name, Florin. (extend the pronunciation)
If you played an instrument as a child, it probably came in a case that you could actually lift. My “starter” accordion came in a suitcase that weighed forty pounds. I was seven years old; I weighed sixty-five pounds; I had two hernia repairs before I was eleven.
First I had to get it to school.
“Why?” you might ask.
“Exactly!” I would answer.
The simple answer was that after school, I went to my grandparents house because both my parents were working and Mr. Coval’s music store was just around the corner. Coval’s music store- the music store that sold my grandfather the “starter” accordion. Coval’s music store- the store that threw in six months of free lessons to anyone stupid enough to buy a musical instrument that could only be played by european immigrants. Coval’s music store: ”Slowly I turned, step by step . . .” sound effect blend
But don’t let me get ahead of myself.
There simply is no easy way to get a forty-pound suitcase onto a school bus when you are seven years old and weigh sixty five pounds. I remember turning around backwards, dragging the case up the stairs by leveraging it against each of the stairs, and then falling backwards uncontrollably, into the lap of my bus driver, , mild-mannered, a cigar-smoking man named Mr. Meekhouse.
The first time I fell into Mr. Meekhouse’s lap, the force of the collision knocked his cigar out of his mouth, and it fell directly, wet-end-first, into my mouth. Freud once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I’ve known, since I was seven that Freud was an idiot.