My Magrini and Me

SOL March Challenge 2015 Day 30

When I posted that I played the accordion, I had a few comments asking me to go deeper into that musical part of my life.  So, here goes.

I really don’t remember how it all came about.  why the accordion?  When did I start lessons?  I do know that it was at a relatively young age.  My brother has a picture of me as an elementary student holding my child sized accordion.

I do remember through most of elementary school (I went to a Catholic school so it was grades 1 through 8) I took lessons.  We lived in a village (much too small to even be called a town) and I rode the bus to and from school.

Once a week, instead of riding the bus home from school my accordion teacher would be waiting at the school at dismissal time.  I would get in the car with him and he would drive me home and give me my lesson.  Yes, he came to the house.

This continued until he retired.  I then found a new teacher in Frackville, a town about 4 miles away from where we lived.  He conducted lessons from his home so I would go there once a week.  Mr. Kost played in a polka band (this is the coal region and a highly Polish, Slovak mix of people) so it was neat taking lessons from him.

Around this time, my older brother began taking clarinet and saxophone lessons.  We had one friend who played the drums and another who played the trumpet.  It was natural that we would join forces and form a polka band of our own.   We didn’t really hire out or anything like that, but we did get together and play every Saturday evening.

You see, my father owned a bar.  There was a side room that contained tables and chairs.  This is where we would play.  Probably get into trouble today if we did something like this but back then it didn’t matter.

We enjoyed playing and, truth be told, it wasn’t all that bad for my father’s business.  People would dance as we played.  My brother sang. It was a fun evening.  We played all the standard types of music coal area bands played—polkas—waltezs—obereks—czardas (Hungarian dance)

This went on for several years until college forced us to disband.

I really haven’t thought much about our band until I wrote the post last week.  It really was an enjoyable time of my life.