The Fiddle

The Fiddle

I have been doing a tower for the local News report for end to a year and let never posted it on my good-olde blog but figured, what the hell. Here it is. Fiddling AroundBilly Garrett played the play on his ranch up on the North Branch of the Three River in California. The start sentence we heard him, he was seated by the old wood burning cook stove while Louise put together some fixings of canned bear meat, garden vegetables and a honest deal of potatoes.

For certain it was the music, but it might also have been the heat of the kitchen that set my young, uninitiated mind spinning, or at least rattled my somewhat metro mind. It didn`t take us yearn to make this was how it had been up there in the hills for over a 100 years, when the au was found. There was no TVin 1847 and there wasn`t any in 1966. Turned out there wasn`t still electricity until 1959 and even in `66 it often went out.But Billy and Louise were ranchers and they were happy people with little hankering for the metropolis over 80 miles off to the east. The acting and dance that followed the play up there was, and I think is, a ligature of sorts that brings together friends. It was a mere kind of entertainment, a pattern that enticed entire communities into the country halls to tell tall tales, reflect on the toils of the disgruntled cow that floundered in the Three after stepping on a salmon, tip a friendly beverage and dancing till the sun came up. Not a bad life. The play we heard there in the mountains was one of those reminders of a wind that passes through people and their communities. But while the tunes tie us to the past, they are likewise section of the present, part of a custom that has crossed oceans, been limited and still lurk in the woodlands around town, that would be Amherst.It wasn`t long after hearing Billy that I rounded up a monkey and started"messin`" around, thinking I might be a piece of the thread. Maybe it is bumpkin music, but then, maybe, I was among my people. Not being one to see nothin` real fast, I struggled but eventually came up with Soldiers Joy,Liberty, and Old Joe Clark. It`s not to say that I didn`t get my life threatened a few times for making all that noise, but in time, the medicine from the Three 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 large colorful dispersions are being tossed around as if truth had no value.The plot is binding on and the tunes are quick in a way old Billy would have loved. To remember that I am now his age is unsettling but it could be worse. Today we played The Hog-eyed Man and I had to question where that one came from. Maybe from a man of great girth who in his sight had partially enclosed his eyes much care a fattened hog three years from butchering. It is a line in a small key but still spirited, still fit for the dance. Then too, there is Cotton-eyed Joe-a melody for the man with an unpleasant, malady. Maybe he was a whiskey-blinded buck dancer from late in the swamps of Portage County-more likely Waupaca County. Fortune my Foe was a favourite at public hangings in England where the bible states, "The rite of public hanging was a most popular spectator sport." It was " -an exorcismof personal monstrosities and be only to the end of monarchs or a latter day tennis final." I do think times are changing for the better-but the music lives. I have ever enjoyed the bounce of the tune Jack`s Maggot , but have concluded, it is not around a vivacious larva, but suspect a maggot must be around other pet.Jacky Tarexudes the spirit 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 good amount of disgusting rum.A short performance, or possibly a serious one, may have concluded with a spark 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 performing The Devil`s Dream , all tunes are just 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 engaged with grinning friends, while the voice of remote times and places flies through the air. It is all a Lover`s Waltz.