Walkin’ in the woods alone

In the fourth grade, we were asked for our choice of a musical instrument to learn. I asked for a saxophone. They gave me a violin...

A year earlier, my grandfather, a man of little patience, had given me a few lessons on Hawaiian guitar, but he had given up in frustration when my progress failed to meet his expectations. Later on, he would fuel my interest in shortwave radio, another lifelong pursuit...

Carrying a violin case to school wasn't exactly a big help to my social status, but I progressed well enough on the instrument that my parents arranged for me to take lessons from Harry Taub, one of the Buffalo Philharmonic's most respected violinists. Taub was a stern taskmaster, long on criticism and short on praise. A number of times, he squeezed my index and middle fingers together so tightly that the nail from one cut into the other, but it was the constant criticism that was the primary factor in my eventual decision to quit the instrument...

Many years later, I had a very moving conversation with an English gentleman who was a few years my senior. He was waiting while a CB radio was being installed in his car, and somehow in the course of our chat, we discovered that we had both played the violin as youngsters. I related my story, and Peter confided that his violin teacher had eventually concluded that he was tone deaf, a near mortal sin in a musically talented family. His father had become so incensed upon hearing the news that he took the violin and smashed it to pieces. Some fifty years later, you could still hear the pain in Peter's voice when he spoke, and see it in his eyes. When he left the shop that evening, he took special care to say goodbye and thank me for the wonderful conversation. It was as if that painful memory, which had been bottled up inside him for so long, had finally been vanquished in the light of day. I hope so. He seemed to be a very kind and gentle man...

As a child, the male figures in my life were mostly distant, authoritarian figures, save for Uncle Lorne, whom I never heard utter a cross word. He was a calm, soft-spoken man, seemingly at peace with himself and the world, and possessed of a zen-like patience and wisdom. Aunt Matie was his perfect counterpoint, a sweet, even-tempered woman with a heart of gold. Their house on Seventh Street remained a favorite refuge right up until her untimely death...

I was never really one of the guys, anyway. Fighting and roughhousing weren't exactly my favorite pursuits. I was a reader and a dreamer; a lover, not a fighter. One of the last to be picked when choosing up sides in sports; one of the first to be singled out for ridicule and abuse...

So I withdrew into a world of my own creation, with imaginary friends who never laughed or pointed fingers; who never threatened or hurt. Books and music were my companions. From childhood on, I would read myself to sleep at night, often with a transistor radio playing softly in the background. AM radio in Buffalo during the late '50s and early '60s was alive with a variety of wonderful sounds. Doo-wop groups, plaintive country ballads, reverb-drenched guitar and sax instrumentals, novelty tunes, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and even folk music shared the airwaves with the pop tunes of the day. Compared with today's restricted playlists and formats, it was an aural smorgasbord of sounds...

My father had a sizeable collection of 78 rpm records from the pre-war, big band era: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, etc. Of these, three novelty records were my personal favorites: Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, Fats Waller's Your Feet's Too Big, and Holiday For Strings by Spike Jones. I literally wore the grooves out of all three. The hi-dee-hi-dee-hi-dee-hi chorus of the Calloway song was infectious, Spike Jones' humor and irreverence were a forerunner to my love affair with Frank Zappa's music and wit in later years, and the Fats Waller tune was all too fitting for a young boy whose feet has grown to a man's size 13 in as many years...

In the mid-1950s, I started collecting records on my own, using money I'd earned cutting grass or shoveling snow. My tastes were a little odd for a nine year old; among the first 78's I purchased were Andy Williams' Are You Sincere, Charlie Gracie's Butterfly, and Just Walkin' in the Rain by the melodramatic Johnny Ray. A year later, I received my first 45 rpm record player as a Christmas gift, and my record collection gradually swelled with disks by Buddy Holly & the Crickets, Bill Haley & the Comets, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Huey 'Piano' Smith & the Clowns, the Coasters, The Clovers, the Drifters, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dion & the Belmonts, Larry Williams, Link Wray, Duane Eddy, the Ventures, and many others. My aunt had discovered a shop on the corner of Ninth Steet and Pine Avenue that sold used jukebox records, five or six for a dollar. On every visit, I'd return with a bagful of new sounds...

My first pocket radio was a 2 transistor Japanese marvel that could hardly pull in the local stations, with audio so anemic that it was necessary to hold the speaker right against your ear in order to hear it. I remember hearing the news of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly one February morning as I was waiting for the bus to Benjamin Franklin Junior High, but it would be a few more years before I'd realize the full extent of the loss...

It was my grandfather who introduced me to the world of shortwave radio, with a wonderful Hallicrafters SX-28 receiver. From my basement refuge, I could listen to voices from all over the world: the BBC from London, HCJB from Quito, Ecuador, exotic stations from Brazzaville and Leopoldville in the French and Belgian Congo, the Voice of America, and, most intriguing of all, the Communist propaganda from Radio Moscow. I also listened to ham radio operators from around the world, and dreamed of one day joining their ranks...

I also built and rebuilt a large HO scale model railroad, that never quite worked the way I had envisioned, but I had fun designing the track plans. As with all of my interests, I read every relevant book or magazine that I could find. For better or worse, every interest became an all-consuming passion until I moved on to the next challenge...

Somewhere around the age of four or five, my parents had given me a dog, a mongrel terrier that I named Soxy because of his markings. He was a rather unruly pup, and my folks had used a rolled-up newspaper to discipline him. (On me, they used a wooden yardstick or a leather belt, but that's another story...) I remember trying to follow their example, only to have him rip the paper from my hands; then another, and another, until the floor was littered with shredded newspapers. So much for trying to act 'butch'...

The insistent cat in my lap as I type these words is evidence that some things never change...

Eventually, my folks decided that Soxy was incorrigible, and took him someplace far away, only to find the poor, bedraggled pup perched on our doorstep a few days later. The reunion was short-lived, however. A short while later, he was diagnosed with distemper, and was taken away by the SPCA...

It was several years before I had another dog, a mixed breed cocker spaniel name Laddie. He was the perfect playmate and companion for a quiet boy like me. I had a few friends in the neighborhood by that time, but I still spent much of my time alone...

Perhaps my favorite place in the world was my aunt and uncle's camp near Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks, where we spent many a summer vacation. I loved the clean mountain air and the background chorus of songbirds, crickets, hummingbirds, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and cicadas. I loved fishing for perch, sunfish, bullheads and northern pikes. And I loved listening to records or picking out melodies on the old player piano in my Aunt Matie's living room while a roaring fire crackled in the fireplace. Even now, my mind's eye sees every detail...

It was the end of summer, only days before my twelfth birthday. We had just returned home after a great two week stay in the mountains. Laddie had gone with us, as well as my friend Bobby, who lived across the street. My favorite cousin Jack was there, and we'd spent a lot of time exploring and running around in the woods with Daisy air rifles. I never saw my folks as happy as when we were in the mountains with Aunt Matie and Uncle Lorne. It had been a perfect summer vacation, but while we were unpacking the car, Laddie slipped away. The next morning, a police officer came to our door with the sad news that he'd been hit and killed at an intersection a mile away. I was inconsolable in my grief; at first, I rejected the offer when Bobby's mother offered me a fish bowl and some guppies, but then I succumbed. No one could have suspected how much that small act of kindness would come to affect my later life...