Grandfather's Fiddle
Created | Updated Sep 25, 2006
My grandfather's fiddle hung on the wall of my grandmother's house, sprouting plastic ivy from the F-holes. One string was missing , the others were limp. The bow had been cracked and repaired by my grandmother with Scotch Magic tape.
I never knew my grandfather; he died just months before I was born. I never heard him sing or play. I knew him only from the photo my grandmother kept on her dresser, and the bits and pieces I gleened from conversations over the years: that his name for my grandmother was "Toots", that he had bright blue eyes, that "The Blue Danube" was his favorite song on any instrument, and that my father, to this very day cannot remain dry eyed when someone plays or sings "Danny Boy". And, I knew that he had had that fiddle since he was ten years old.
The fiddle was shrine. I think I knew that, even as a small child, even though the plastic ivy was a bit weird by way of altar decorations. I used to walk past it on my way to the bathroom and reach up surreptitiously to touch the strings. I used to wonder about the music it had once made, imagining the jigs and reels and soaring aires it must have once sang. Despite my furtive pluckings, the strings remained stonily silent.
The fiddle followed my grandmother when she moved out of the brick row-house my father had grown up in. She hung it up in the hallway of the small apartment she rented in the same Irish neighborhood in Queens, NY. It still sported the plastic ivy, and it still remained silent. It followed her finally, to the hospital she died in, where according to the nurses, it inexplicably fell off the wall my father had hung it on the night she died, shattering the bow, freeing the fingerboard, cracking a tuning peg and breaking the bridge.
At my grandmother's funeral, my uncle asked me if I wanted my grandmother's gold cross. I declined. My cousin was much more interested in jewlery than I was. But I did ask him where the fiddle was. He always did think I was a bit odd, and this seemed to confirm it for him. And so, I carried the fiddle and the broken bow back home with me to Chicago in pieces, wrapped up in a bag tucked under the seat in front of me on the airplane.
I felt hopeless every time I looked at it, so I kept it wrapped up on my closet shelf. It seemed an all too fitting analogy for my life at that time. One day I took it down. Mustering my courage, I found a nearby violin maker who took one look at it and quoted me an outrageous price to fix it up, all the while sneering at its lack of "quality". She referred to its "sentimental value" as if it were meaningless, and of course the fact that I couldn't play incited her speak to me as if I were an idiot. She acted as if I had personally insulted her by bringing it to her. I distinctly remember her looking at me with disdain and pronouncing that "this is no violin". I brought the pieces of the fiddle and myself back home and put them all back up on the shelf.
Since I was an impoverished graduate student at the University of Chicago at the time, I used to volunteer at the Old Town School of Folk Music so that I could hear great music for free. I took tickets, ushered people to their seats, tended bar, all for the chance to sit on the steps and hear Liz Caroll, Bill Morrissey and others. One day, a friend of mine mentioned that we should check out Hogeye Music shop in Evanston, IL. We hopped on the El train and rode it to the last stop.
Hogeye Music was a place that felt instantly like home when I set foot in the door. Rows of guitars, Celtic harps, banjos, and yes... fiddles. Jim, the owner, was tall and lanky with a bushy dark beard, intense eyes, strong opinions and a deeply resonant voice. I was easily intimidated, but I went up to him and asked if he repaired fiddles. He told me sure, just bring it on in sometime, as if I were offering to introduce him to an old family friend. I guess, I was.
I was fully prepared for the worst. But Jim, took the pieces I laid out before him and examined each thoughtfully, turning them over slowly, placing them here and there, peering inside the fiddle, assessing what could be saved and what had to be replaced. Eventually, he put them back where they belonged for the staggering price of $130 and one condition.
"What's that?"
"You have to learn to play it."
"OK," I remember saying simply.
I went back the next Saturday and my granfather's fiddle, now my fiddle, was waiting for me looking wonderful in the used case with the crushed purple velvet lining Jim had thrown in along with a new bow. My fiddle teacher, Rick, was waiting for me too. After playing it a bit, Rick proclaimed it "one heck of a fiddle!" It has a dusky, mellow voice, I love. We started with O'Keefe's Slide and moved on to Drowsy Maggie, The Red Haired Boy, The Fisherman's Hornpipe, Devils Dream, the Swallowtail Jig, Flowers of Edinburgh, The Rights of Man, Star of the County Down... the songs from my childhood seemed to be racing out of my fingers as if I'd always known them.
For my father's next birthday, I called him and played "Danny Boy" over the phone. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
I never knew my grandfather; he died just months before I was born. I never heard him sing or play. I knew him only from the photo my grandmother kept on her dresser, and the bits and pieces I gleened from conversations over the years: that his name for my grandmother was "Toots", that he had bright blue eyes, that "The Blue Danube" was his favorite song on any instrument, and that my father, to this very day cannot remain dry eyed when someone plays or sings "Danny Boy". And, I knew that he had had that fiddle since he was ten years old.
The fiddle was shrine. I think I knew that, even as a small child, even though the plastic ivy was a bit weird by way of altar decorations. I used to walk past it on my way to the bathroom and reach up surreptitiously to touch the strings. I used to wonder about the music it had once made, imagining the jigs and reels and soaring aires it must have once sang. Despite my furtive pluckings, the strings remained stonily silent.
The fiddle followed my grandmother when she moved out of the brick row-house my father had grown up in. She hung it up in the hallway of the small apartment she rented in the same Irish neighborhood in Queens, NY. It still sported the plastic ivy, and it still remained silent. It followed her finally, to the hospital she died in, where according to the nurses, it inexplicably fell off the wall my father had hung it on the night she died, shattering the bow, freeing the fingerboard, cracking a tuning peg and breaking the bridge.
At my grandmother's funeral, my uncle asked me if I wanted my grandmother's gold cross. I declined. My cousin was much more interested in jewlery than I was. But I did ask him where the fiddle was. He always did think I was a bit odd, and this seemed to confirm it for him. And so, I carried the fiddle and the broken bow back home with me to Chicago in pieces, wrapped up in a bag tucked under the seat in front of me on the airplane.
I felt hopeless every time I looked at it, so I kept it wrapped up on my closet shelf. It seemed an all too fitting analogy for my life at that time. One day I took it down. Mustering my courage, I found a nearby violin maker who took one look at it and quoted me an outrageous price to fix it up, all the while sneering at its lack of "quality". She referred to its "sentimental value" as if it were meaningless, and of course the fact that I couldn't play incited her speak to me as if I were an idiot. She acted as if I had personally insulted her by bringing it to her. I distinctly remember her looking at me with disdain and pronouncing that "this is no violin". I brought the pieces of the fiddle and myself back home and put them all back up on the shelf.
Since I was an impoverished graduate student at the University of Chicago at the time, I used to volunteer at the Old Town School of Folk Music so that I could hear great music for free. I took tickets, ushered people to their seats, tended bar, all for the chance to sit on the steps and hear Liz Caroll, Bill Morrissey and others. One day, a friend of mine mentioned that we should check out Hogeye Music shop in Evanston, IL. We hopped on the El train and rode it to the last stop.
Hogeye Music was a place that felt instantly like home when I set foot in the door. Rows of guitars, Celtic harps, banjos, and yes... fiddles. Jim, the owner, was tall and lanky with a bushy dark beard, intense eyes, strong opinions and a deeply resonant voice. I was easily intimidated, but I went up to him and asked if he repaired fiddles. He told me sure, just bring it on in sometime, as if I were offering to introduce him to an old family friend. I guess, I was.
I was fully prepared for the worst. But Jim, took the pieces I laid out before him and examined each thoughtfully, turning them over slowly, placing them here and there, peering inside the fiddle, assessing what could be saved and what had to be replaced. Eventually, he put them back where they belonged for the staggering price of $130 and one condition.
"What's that?"
"You have to learn to play it."
"OK," I remember saying simply.
I went back the next Saturday and my granfather's fiddle, now my fiddle, was waiting for me looking wonderful in the used case with the crushed purple velvet lining Jim had thrown in along with a new bow. My fiddle teacher, Rick, was waiting for me too. After playing it a bit, Rick proclaimed it "one heck of a fiddle!" It has a dusky, mellow voice, I love. We started with O'Keefe's Slide and moved on to Drowsy Maggie, The Red Haired Boy, The Fisherman's Hornpipe, Devils Dream, the Swallowtail Jig, Flowers of Edinburgh, The Rights of Man, Star of the County Down... the songs from my childhood seemed to be racing out of my fingers as if I'd always known them.
For my father's next birthday, I called him and played "Danny Boy" over the phone. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
