If Walls Could Talk, Part Nine: Music at Valley Brook Farm

Something very special stood against one wall of our tongue-in-groove-boards-painted-light-green living room.  It was an exciting day when Daddy brought home something I had never even seen before, being raised in a Mennonite church and all. What was it?  A wonderful, magnificent piece of creative art and music called a church pump organ with a hutch on top!  Seems Daddy had been to a church auction where he couldn't pass up a good buy.  (The thought occurs to me now that perhaps he bought it for me to replace Dicky Bird.)  No matter the reason, I'm glad he bought it!

To me, it was a thing of wondrous beauty: dark ornate mahogany wood with a hand-crafted look that sported a lavishly-decorated mirrored hutch on top.  The polished scroll work begged to be touched and admired.  It wasn't disappointed. :o)  In the lower center of the pump organ were two wide foot pedals fastened to ropes that worked the bellows to play the keys. With the organ also came a round swivel stool with glass claw feet and more ornate turned work.  [I did some research online today and discovered our organ and stool was from the 1800's!]

The long row of push-pull knobs and the ivory and black keys fascinated me.  I was also intimidated.  How would I ever make any music come out of it?  I set to work with a church hymnal and learned to play four-part music by ear and loved it.  I used to sing with it too sometimes.

It was around this time that I also learned my dad loved music, and how as an Amish young man he hid an auto-harp in the attic.  Those attic walls could tell you how he used to sneak up there to make music.  I feel a sense of loss that I never heard him play. 

For my sixteenth birthday, Mom and Dad had a special surprise for me.  They gave me my Auntie Fannie's 48-bass Cellini white pearl accordian with pink bellows. Wow!  She had bought it in Oregon where I was born, and my parents bought it from her with the agreement that it stay in the family.  I had heard Auntie play that thing and she could sing and yodel too!  She and Mom used to sing together in Oregon.

I watched how Fannie played the accordian and she gave me some instructions, then I was on my own.  I learned to play by ear (nothing fancy), and after awhile I was singing and playing my accordian at the nursing home in Oakland, MD when our Mennonite youth group ministered there once a month. 

At the close of a busy day on the farm, I enjoyed playing my accordian at the center of our Y-shaped sidewalk as I faced the sunset from our front yard.  I would sing and play "My God and I", "How Great Thou Art", and other peaceful songs.  I loved the song by Jim Reeves, "The Flowers, The Sunset, The Trees", and also liked "Distant Drums".   I'd sing and play those too.

After I was married, I played and sang with the accordian several times at our Women's Aglow meetings in Somerset, PA, and also to lead worship at Indian Lake Christian Center where Dave and I attended church.  I still have the accordian and play it once in a great while, but I'm rusty.  I've written a few songs for my ears only. :o)  Years ago I also bought an electric OmniChord in lieu of an autoharp.  But it all started with music at Valley Brook Farm.  Thank you, Mom, and even though he went to Heaven in April of 2003, I say "thank-you, Daddy"!

Copyright © 2012 Elaine Beachy