The Fiddle

I have been doing a column for the local News paper for close to a year and have never posted it on my good-olde blog but figured, what the hell. Here it is.

Fiddling Around



Billy Garrett played the fiddle on his ranch up on the North Fork of the Trinity River in California. The first time we heard him, he was sitting by the old wood burning cook stove while Louise put together some fixings of canned bear meat, garden vegetables and a good pile of potatoes. For sure it was the music, but it might also have been the warmth of the kitchen that set my young, uninitiated mind spinning, or at least rattled my somewhat metro mind.

It didn’t take us long to realize this was how it had been up there in the hills for over a hundred years, when the gold was found. There was no TV in 1847 and there wasn’t any in 1966. Turned out there wasn’t even electricity until 1959 and even in ’66 it frequently went out. But Billy and Louise were ranchers and they were happy people with little hankering for the city over 80 miles off to the east.

The playing and dancing that followed the fiddle up there was, and I suppose is, a binder of sorts that brings together friends. It was a simple form of entertainment, a form that enticed entire communities into the country halls to tell tall tales, reflect on the toils of the disgruntled cow that floundered in the Trinity after stepping on a salmon, tip a friendly beverage and dance till the sun came up. Not a bad life.

The fiddle we heard there in the mountains was one of those reminders of a thread that passes through people and their communities. But while the tunes tie us to the past, they are also part of the present, part of a tradition that has crossed oceans, been modified and still linger in the woodlands around town, that would be Amherst.

It wasn’t long after hearing Billy that I rounded up a fiddle and started “messin’” around, thinking I might be a part of the thread. Maybe it is bumpkin music, but then, maybe, I was among my people. Not being one to learn nothin’ real fast, I struggled but finally came up with Soldiers Joy, Liberty, and Old Joe Clark. It’s not to say that I didn’t have my life threatened a few times for making all that noise, but in time, the music from the Trinity River trickled in and on to the prairies of Colorado. With “fiddlin‘” friends, we did our best to fill homes and barns with the heritage, dancing feet and uncontrolable laughs.

So the fiddling goes on. Friends are gathering, a few local brews of character heartily embraced, stories of backwoods Wisconsin are flowing like the surging Tomorrow River and great colorful dispersions are being tossed about as if truth had no value. The game is back on and the tunes are flying in a way old Billy would have loved. To think that I am now his age is unsettling but it could be worse.

Today we played The Hog-eyed Man and I had to wonder where that one came from. Maybe from a man of great girth who in his mass had partially enclosed his eyes much like a fattened hog three days from butchering. It is a tune in a minor key but still spirited, still fit for the dance. Then too, there is Cotton-eyed Joe---a tune for the man with an unpleasant, malady. Maybe he was a whiskey-blinded buck dancer from deep in the swamps of Portage County---more likely Waupaca County.

Fortune my Foe was a favorite at public hangings in England where the book states, “The ritual of public hanging was a most popular spectator sport.” It was “ ---an exorcism of personal monstrosities and equal only to the death of monarchs or a latter day tennis final.” I do think times are changing for the better----but the music lives.

I have always enjoyed the bounce of the tune Jack’s Maggot , but have concluded, it is not about a vivacious larva, but suspect a maggot must be some other pet. Jacky Tar exudes the flavor of the sailing days and no doubt was played on the decks of sailing ships while lonely sailors danced among the spars and yardarms, while revved up with a full measure of disgusting rum. A poor performance, or possibly a good one, may have ended with a trip to Davy Jones’s locker. Life was cheap.

The Hag with the Dribble certainly has a delightful title and an engaging melody but a questionable visual, but among those still playing The Devil’s Dream , all tunes are fair game.

So in the end, Billy passed a torch, the tradition moves along, the music lives another day, and the feet of dancers clog into the evenings. It was a gift, that to this day has meshed with grinning friends, while the sound of distant times and places flies through the air. It is all a Lover’s Waltz.