. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”
This week, I’m expressing thanks for the fact that so many popular songs and folk tunes can be played with only about three chords.
What a gift for the beginning guitar player, or the beginning anything player! You get G, C, and D, or A, D, and E, or C, F, and G under your belt, plus maybe a relative minor chord, and you’re off to the races. You can point to a lot of things as evidence for God, and this is certainly one. Hallelujah!
. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”
This week, I’m thankful (I guess . . .) for what turns out to be an optimistic nature in myself. Because here we go again.
. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”
This week, I’m thankful for Columbia’s own KOPN radio, which saved my life and continues to make our community interesting, intelligent, and artful.
KOPN is a community-supported, owned, and operated nonprofit radio station based in Columbia, Missouri. It offers a wide variety of news, talk, and music, including syndicated and locally produced material. The best stuff is the product of local volunteer DJs (board shifters), who have a passion about whatever their program is about. I’ve talked about KOPN before. (Several times.)
The programs are incredibly eclectic.
I’ve been a devoted listener of KOPN since about 1981, when I went to festival called Spring Fling. KOPN used to host the festival for several years, centered on Broadway and Ninth streets, closing streets in the heart of downtown Columbia. There were different stages at the festival, with rock, bluegrass, and so on. There were vendors with booths lining the streets: The international MU students group, the Ba’hai people, the local health food co-op and Catalpa Tree Cafe, the anti-death-penalty group, the anti-nukes group, artists, handmade jewelry and tie-dyed clothes, and so much more. Spring Fling provided a one-day festival that displayed the overall culture of KOPN. I felt like I’d found my people. (Indeed, I had.) I went home, turned the dial of my bedroom clock radio to 89.5, and listened to women’s music for the first time: “The Moon of Artemis” was on.
Times have changed. The radio—and radio’s place in our lives—has changed. My tastes in music have changed.
These days, I especially love to listen to KOPN while I’m driving to and from Columbia. Their weekday afternoon drive-time programs are great. The miles go right by.
It seems I’m usually in Columbia on Thursdays, kind of. And I’ve really been enjoying the program “Hepcat’s Holiday,” hosted by Carol Goodnick. It’s a program that was first on the air in 1986. It features jazz, jive, swing, and blues from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. Goodnick is an enthusiastic, informative, upbeat DJ.
Recently she did a show that was railroad themed. It was great! A few of the songs she featured were Judy Garland, “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe”; Leadbelly, “Midnight Special” and “Rock Island Line”; Sister Rosetta Tharpe “This Train”; Duke Ellington, “Choo Choo”; Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, “California, Here I Come”; and the Andrews Sisters, “When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam.”
This is seriously good stuff, vintage music, jazz history, well-curated. “Hepcat’s Holiday” is broadcast live each Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m. Central Time. So if you’re in Central Missouri, just tune your dial to 89.5 and catch the program on your radio.
But no matter where you live, if you go to KOPN’s website, you can not only listen live, but also, in most cases, listen to recent shows, for at least up to two weeks. This means that neither geography nor time zones or scheduling conflicts can interfere with your hearing a particular radio program.
KOPN, by the way, is entering an exciting new period in its fifty-year history. Since it first went on the air in 1973, its studios have been at 915 East Broadway, in the heart of downtown Columbia, although visitors must ascend an imposing flight of stairs from street level. Well, in 2022 KOPN will be moving to a new studio space—one that’s handicapped accessible. In a building that KOPN owns. Though the thought of saying goodbye to what I considered hallowed, historic space is rather sad, this is great news for the station, the organization, the community, the institution.
I encourage you to check out KOPN’s programming. I’m sure you’ll find something you find interesting and enjoyable. Maybe you’ll be inspired to send them a few dollars, like I have, over the years.
Anyway, this is my gratitude jar for the day.
Something about January makes me rather reflective. I guess it’s that the holiday busy-ness is over, and it’s usually always cold or grim enough outside that I don’t want to be outdoors, and that there’s not much yard work to do, anyway.
But before we got cooped up inside, watching TV and what passes for TV these days, we spent lots of time outside. Starting in March and continuing through October, we spend a lot of time in the backyard, enjoying each other's company.
When COVID appeared in the United States in March, it immediately affected big cities on the coasts. But while people in those areas quite reasonably freaked out and began to adapt to being stuck inside their high-priced urban apartments and missing contact with the zillions of big-city people they otherwise would see every day on their work commutes, at that time COVID wasn’t yet affecting us here in Missouri much at all. Naturally—just like cultural trends and fashion, the middle of the continent lags behind. Which proved deceptive—around here, most of us started taking measures in mid-March, but there was not much sign of the disease in our area. It really hadn’t gotten here yet. Hospitals kept up with cases. Only a few people had died. This probably fed the opinions of people who thought it was a hoax.
Our midwestern numbers started their steep climb in the summer and fall. I’m still amazed at how many supposedly practical, hard-headed, no-nonsense midwesterners didn’t watch and learn from the people on the coasts. I mean, looking over at someone else’s test is only illegal when you’re in school. But in everyday life, looking over your shoulder at others just common sense. Even though we had low numbers for so long, it made good sense for midwesterners to take precautionary measures: With so many people not following guidelines for one reason or another (or, despite all reason), it wouldn’t have taken much for an infected person to hop on a plane or drive into Missouri and start infecting people willy-nilly.
So, Sue and I have basically stayed away from folks since March. We wear masks when in public. We do go out for groceries and other needed purchases. We also get groceries and supplies for my folks and deliver them. (And we wear masks when we visit my parents.) We go to doctor and dentist appointments. We go to haircuts—though there have been some postponements, as our salon has had times when it could not be open. We initially made a point to spend money at our favorite local restaurants a few nights a week, getting carryout, to help them economically. For example, we bought wine from Vines on a carry-out basis.
But our restaurant patronage, even with carry-out purchases, has dwindled as the local government has never placed restrictions on restaurants or even bars, and there are plenty of people in this city, swallowing rightwing propaganda, who think COVID is somehow a hoax. With so many of them around and going to restaurants and bars unmasked, we opt to just stay away. Apparently the leaders in this city think that the best way to keep restaurants and shops in business is to have no restrictions at all; instead, it’s “do what y’all are comfortable with,” and then businesses just close temporarily whenever they find out someone in there had the ’rona. (“Oopsie.”) I guess that’s a plan, of sorts.
But it really just means that people like us, who really do not want to get sick, or to carry and spread the disease to others, are uncomfortable going into most places in town, even for the five to fifteen minutes we may have to wait when our pick-up order isn't ready on time. Some groceries, for example, insist on masks; others don’t and thus attract more than their fair share of anti-maskers, potential virus spreaders. You have to look carefully at the signs on the doors, to gauge the degree of danger within a business.
So we’ve decided we can’t feel responsible for the success of local businesses. Apparently, they are getting plenty of customers without us. I would feel better about shopping and dining out and getting carry-out—and I’d be more likely to do so—if most people around here took the virus seriously. Or if a local ordinance made it so that everyone was required to wear masks, meaning that business owners could shrug and say, “Well, we all have to do it, so please wear a mask.” But whatever. The lackadaisical people might finally have to change their attitudes and behaviors once the new, more easily-transmissible variant becomes widespread this spring.
I keep thinking the same grim notion: that people around here, and in other small-town, hinterland areas, simply will not take the disease seriously until someone they know dies from it, or until the dead are stacked like cordwood in the streets. The bad math of the anti-maskers often goes like this: “99 percent of people who get COVID don’t die from it, so what’s the problem?” I say: Bad math, because in a town the size of Jefferson City, 1 percent of the population is 430 souls. In the United States, 1 percent is some 3,282,395 people, dead. And the notion of “surviving” COVID is problematic, as many people who don’t die from it nevertheless suffer long-term, possibly permanent health effects and disability as a result: strokes, lung conditions, migraines, etc. And you know that if the insurance companies have their way, they would like to return to the days when they could zap you for preexisting conditions—oh, they’d be happy to sell you insurance, but at a higher rate, or a policy that won’t cover the very things you need—and having had COVID would be a reason to dock you.
So, our lifestyle has changed. With us eating out less, I’m cooking much more. Spring, summer, and fall, we enjoyed grilling and eating in the backyard. Many evenings, with the firepit. It was fun.
And I’ve perfected my pizza-from-scratch making—booyah! We’ve been saving a lot of money on food, since we’re mostly eating from scratch. We also save a lot on beverages, since restaurants have such a tremendous markup on those. We’ve both lost some weight—it turns out my cooking must be fairly healthy, or else we eat smaller portions than we would at restaurants. It’s certainly not because of more exercise.
Indeed, reviewing the past year, I realized we’ve watched more TV than usual. Which is to say, we watched TV. Ordinarily, from spring until fall, I listen to Cardinals baseball radio broadcasts whenever it’s convenient. It’s the soundtrack for summer evenings. Like, while doing the dishes. Or working the crossword and Cryptoquip. This year, I really missed the baseball broadcasts. Summer just wasn’t the same without it. Then, when we did finally get a baseball season, it was weird. That fake crowd noise! But at least we had some kind of season. I have a new appreciation for the ability of professional sports to deliver us from the tedium or pain of our daily lives.
So what did we do? We don’t get cable, so everything we watched was online: YouTube, Facebook videos, Netflix, or whatever. So here’s some of what has entertained us.
First on the list was the Metropolitan Opera! With its live performances closed because of the pandemic, the Met has been offering nightly broadcasts of its years of archived HD performances. These are beyond cool! The first one we watched was La Fille du Régiment, on March 20, starring the energetic coloratura Natalie Dessay in a hilarious comedic role, and Juan Diego Flórez as her love interest, a charming Swiss villager capable of singing multiple high Cs. The live performance was in 2008, but we didn’t see it then, so it was all new to us! They’re still showing these encore performances—a different opera each night, and each one is available for viewing for 24 hours. Check it out on the Met’s website.
Another source of entertainment was a variety of our favorite musicians who have been posting regular or occasional house concerts on Facebook. These are fun and sometimes . . . interesting. We’re so used to hearing pop musicians via professionally engineered recordings, or in concerts with full bands where professional sound technicians work to perfect what booms out of the speakers. But here were these musicians, in their living rooms or music rooms, sitting alone with their guitars, sometimes reading off of music, telling stories, and occasionally squinting at their devices and responding to live comments . . . suddenly looking like real people negotiating their video devices, instead of being completely polished, shining icons. It’s refreshing. Some of these we’ve watched were Melissa Etheridge, the Indigo Girls, and Cris Williamson. I think it really takes a lot of guts to offer such casual performances, often from their own homes.
Of these, perhaps my favorite has been Lucie Blue Tremblay, a French-Canadian singer-songwriter who’s a legend in the women’s music genre. Bonjour, Lucie Blue! She has become a US citizen and, per her website, “In the summers you can find Lucie and Pat managing their new guest house ‘The Princess & The Sea Nova Scotia’ as they live life deeply and gently in a wonderful fishing community on the Bay of Fundy.”
Their live Facebook events have been really fun. In the first of these that we saw, in midsummer, Lucie and Pat were simply walking around the pandemic-empty tourist town of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, stopping in shops and showing us the sights, playing a song or two, say, in a mostly empty ice cream parlor or in a local park. Keeping people’s spirits up—including ours.
On the flip side of these casual, and I’m sure they would all admit, less-than-professionally-engineered performances, we’ve also seen some very slick, well-rehearsed and well-engineered performances by Sue’s favorite performer these days, Brandi Carlile. In case you didn’t know, Brandi and her family, and the three men who are in her group, and their immediate (and interconnected) families, all live more or less in a compound in the Seattle area. Thus, they basically have a bubble in which they’re all able to interact with each other with few restrictions.
To raise funds for charitable causes, and to provide money for their idle road crew, who would otherwise have plenty of paying work traveling to all their concerts, Brandi and co. have had a series of live pay-per-view concerts. They basically play one of her albums as a single concert. I think we’ve seen all of them. There was even a live “Still Home for the Holidays” Christmas concert broadcast from her living room. As I understand it, in their compound, they have a bona fide recording studio that easily doubles as a stage for these programs. Nice lighting, videography, and sound. The music is polished and rich; they can be together as needed to rehearse. But since it’s live and informal, there’s a fun sense of spontaneity. We’ve enjoyed these a lot. We’ve even watched a few twice!
Other entertainments we’ve enjoyed have been on Netflix, which we finally broke down and subscribed to. We tried hard not to binge-watch The Crown, once its new season was finally released. We watched a lot of old movies—Sue’s a big fan of Joan Crawford. Sue subscribed to Criterion, so we have a plethora of nifty old classic movies to watch. And on Netflix, we watched several old Star Trek shows; for instance, we looked at the (generally humorous) Lwaxana Troi episodes of Next Gen and DS9; then we watched all the Vic Fontaine episodes from DS9. All quite fun and diverting; we didn’t watch any of the episodes about dysfunctional, evil, orange-colored authoritarian aliens hell-bent on destroying the universe.
Then, of course, we enjoyed a lot of miscellaneous Christmas programming on Netflix. I’d kind of forgotten how fun TV can be.
Any videos watched on a device can be watched on a laptop, and anything can be plugged into a screen, so we watched a lot of non-programming programming together, too. Chief among these were the offerings of Virtual Railfan on YouTube. Our default is the live webcam from the Amtrak station at La Plata, Missouri. VR keeps adding new webcams, so there’s always something to enjoy. Fort Madison, Iowa, was new this year, for example, and it shows not only the train tracks but also boats, barges, and bald eagles on the Mississippi, and the turning bridge over the river. Plus, every few days, VR posts “grab bag” videos that compile the most unusual and interesting moments from all the cameras: bears crossing the road late at night in Revelstoke, British Columbia; cars that crept too far forward at intersections getting “knighted” by railroad crossing gates in La Grange, Kentucky; and a bewildering variety of executive, heritage, and anniversary locomotives, “meets,” “races,” “power moves,” “slugs,” unusual cargoes, rusty old boxcars bearing logos of “fallen flags,” railroad employees waving at the cameras and giving horn salutes, and more. The chat is well-moderated, cordial, and informative. Thousands of people tune in to VR to watch trains, chat while waiting for trains, and forget our troubles for a while.
Well, wherever you are, I hope you’re well and staying entertained. Stay safe, my friends!
So, what have you done in the past year that you had no idea you’d be doing?
We have been playing our guitars and ukuleles more than we’d imagined. Especially since, until November of 2019, we didn’t have any ukuleles except for the lame, cheap soprano uke I’d gotten in college (or whatever) and never changed the strings on.
But in November 2019, Sue got me a sweet little tenor ukulele. It’s even got built-in pickups and outlet for an amplifier (ha ha ha ha) as well as a built-in electronic tuner. The latter is rather handy.
Sitting around in our house, and in our backyard, has been rather conducive to playing some occasional chords on the fretted instruments. It’s been very relaxing and pleasant, and very old-school.
Sue, especially, has made great strides in her guitar and ukulele skills. She’s been working from YouTube instructional videos as well as downloading exercises. She’s been plugging along at a steady pace with her practice—the logical, compound-interest plan—and she’s gotten really pretty good!
For Christmas, I got her a nice little baritone ukulele. It’s tuned just like the highest-pitched four strings of a regular guitar.
As for me, I have more theoretical background, more of an overview of how it’s supposed to work, how to go about staying in tempo, and which chords usually go together . . . but that doesn’t mean anything about my ability to actually perform. In that department, I rely on the finger and strumming patterns I’d learned in high school.
The fun part is just relaxing and tuning in to each other’s chord patterns and musical ideas. Just going with the flow. Kinda like how we’re all coping with the pandemic, if we’re lucky.
. . . and her zither. So don’t you want to hear more about my great-grandma? Pauline Wehmeyer (1875–1950) was born and raised in Kansas. She married my great-grandpa William August Wilmesherr (1872–1936) and lived with him on her family’s farm in Kincaid, Kansas. They had their first three children, including my grandma, Clara (who was born September 17, 1897), while they were farming there. She used to help her husband with the farm work while her mother babysat the kids. William Wilmesherr wasn’t a big sturdy guy; he was “slightly built,” and a childhood bout of what may have been typhoid might have diminished his constitution.
At the end of the 1800s, falling farm prices helped convince the couple to relocate to Washington, Missouri, about 1900. So they moved all their possessions, including a couple of horses, from eastern Kansas to Washington, Missouri, by boxcar. William rode in the boxcar with the horses, to take care of them.
In Washington, they bought an old house on Henry Street, south of a city ballfield in a neighborhood then called “Goosetown” (east of MO 47 and north of MO 100). In addition to a thriving economy, they had plenty of relatives in the city. William worked as a teamster, hauling brick to locations where houses were being built. The brickyard guys would throw a stack of four bricks to my great-grandpa, and he’d catch them and load them onto his horse-drawn wagon. (So much for being “slightly built,” huh?)
I never could have known them, but I can’t visit Washington without thinking of my great-grandparents, and remembering all the many relatives who lived there.
The German community in Washington was very musical, and the various members of the extended Wehmeyer and Wilmesherr families were involved with the pipe factory band, the Elks band, and the Washington Civic Orchestra. Some of them were very involved with music.
The zither dates to about 1900, so we’re not sure if Pauline bought it before or after moving to Missouri. We think she must’ve bought it soon after moving to Washington, though it’s possible she got it in Kansas. No one knows. My mom suspects she might’ve gotten it via a Sears catalog. There was a famous zither manufacturer in Washington, but I bet those instruments were much more expensive.
In addition to the zither, my great-grandma also had a parlor organ, which she taught herself how to play. Mom says she liked to play “lively hymns” like “Heavenly Sunshine.” Before marriage, she must’ve been a Presbyterian or maybe a Methodist, but her husband was German Lutheran, and that’s what she became after they were married. Apparently, she never much liked the dour, serious hymns of the Lutherans, and that was the one thing she really didn’t care for about her new denomination.
Really, everyone likes to have a fun time. Grandma Renner described how her parents would have get-togethers in their home. The Wilmesherrs would have the Fillas, or the Noelkers over. Or the Dennlers, Lohmeiers, Kampschmidts, Schmidts, Kampschroeders, Huxels, or the Stumpes. They’d serve “dishpans” full of popcorn to their guests, and they’d play cards, or people would bring instruments over and play and sing with Pauline’s parlor organ. Homemade wine might be brought out for the guests, too, and everyone would sip the precious, sweet liquid from little wine glasses.
Great-Grandma Wilmesherr must’ve been a remarkable woman. No nonsense, practical, a capable mother and farmwife, yet musical, curious, and creative. She was famous for her ability to make anything green grow, including vegetables and flowers. She had coldframes and sold flowers and bedding plants to people who stopped by. She had a goldfish pond. My grandma, her daughter, followed in these footsteps and had the same talents and pastimes. Even a goldfish pond.
In winter, Great-Grandma Wilmesherr read “Westerns.” Why not? She had known the plains of windswept Kansas in the late 1800s, and the West was a real thing for her. It might have been the closest thing to actual travel she could have. I think she had an independent streak. I grew up hearing stories about how, as a widow, she’d drive, solo, on curvy, hilly Highway 50 from Washington to Jefferson City, peering at the road through the space between the top of her steering wheel and the dashboard.
When I got married, my mom gave me Pauline Wilmesherr’s wedding ring to use in our ceremony. (She also gave me my great-grandma Renner's wedding band, as well, and that's what Sue used.) It’s the most beautiful wedding ring I could’ve imagined, invented, or asked for, and I see no reason to replace it with anything else—it’s such an honor just to have received it.
Sometimes when I practice my trumpet, I play in my office, where the zither rests in an honored position. With its open strings, it sounds with resonance when I play notes in accordance with its tuning—concert Cs, Gs, Fs, and all their overtones. I play the notes . . . and it breathes again.
So what’s the story with the zither? I don’t know a lot about it, but we’re pretty sure it was my great-grandma Pauline Wilmesherr’s. She died fifteen years before I was born. My mom remembers the zither being in the attic of her mom and dad’s house (218 W. Elm in Jefferson City) when she was growing up. Mom doesn’t remember anyone ever playing it. (For reasons mentioned in my previous post, I can see why it fell by the wayside. Also, at some point, it got out of tune and started losing strings, so . . .) I suspect that one of Mom’s three elder siblings might have had something to do with the missing strings, but who knows; maybe the damage occurred in the previous generation. We were all kids once.
I discovered the zither in an old trunk in my parent’s garage when I was about ten. I don’t know how it came to be in my parents’ basement, except that Mom must’ve acquired it when her parents moved into their new house on Jefferson Street in the 1950s. All that stuff in the Elm Street house had to be gone through. They must have found it in the attic and wondered what to do with it, and Mom must have said, “Oh, I’ll take that; I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but we shouldn’t throw it out.”
I don’t remember how I found it, or why I was snooping around in that old trunk, but there you go. From then on, I was curious about it. With Mom and Dad’s permission, I took it up into my room. Several strings were missing, and it was dreadfully out of tune. Bing! Bong! Thud. Buzz! Twannnng! (So fascinating!)
Not long after this discovery, I carried it with me on one of our many trips to Jefferson City to visit my grandmas. Perhaps this was about the time my Grandpa Renner was in his final illness. Anyway, this memory stands out not only because of what happened with the zither, but also because it was a rare occasion when I was visiting with Grandma Schroeder by myself. If my brother was there, he might’ve been inside reading a book or something. Anyway, my parents weren’t there, so I was alone with Grandma, and with her BFF, Marie Korsemeyer. (Everyone loved Marie.)
And it was nice outside, and we were sitting on the backyard patio enjoying the early evening. We must have had a meal and then remained out there, sitting and chatting as the light left the sky. Like Sue and I do today, in the exact same place.
I don’t remember if they told me to go get the zither or if I did it on my own, but I ended up playing it for them. And those two old ladies sat there and graciously clapped and cackled and encouraged me as I strummed and pounded and plucked that poor old, out-of-tune zither. I played one “song” after another. It didn’t sound like anything. At best, it might’ve sounded like avant-garde music. At best, it was primitive. At best, it was, um, rhythmic. At best, it was emotional. They encouraged me, and they seemed to be having as much of a good time as I was.
. . . I suspect that the more they drank, the better I sounded!
Anyway, I will never forget that evening, and my thoughts often drift to that memory when I sit out in the backyard on pleasant nights.
I rarely (if ever) got Grandma all to myself. As time went on, in my young adult life, the memory of that one evening brought moments of crushing embarrassment, tumbling upon me, once I was old enough to realize how horrid it must have sounded. But today my cringing is tempered by a deep appreciation for their graciousness and their willingness to play along with my childish game.
At some point in my childhood, I tried to tune it, using a pliers—a horrible idea, since it chewed up the tuning pins. And the pins, and the tuning didn’t hold, and several strings were still missing, anyway . . . And so it sat for years, until I moved back to Missouri in the late 1990s, and my parents gave the zither back to me.
And that’s when I was finally in a position to do right by it. In the fall of 1998, Sue and I took it to Music Folk in Webster Groves, Missouri, and I asked them if they could do anything to fix it.
The guy examined it and said it could probably be fixed, but, he reasoned, for the price of fixing it, I could simply buy another zither that was already fixed up, so, um, why bother—? Just hang it on a wall. But I explained that it isn’t just some old curiosity I’d bought at a garage sale—it had been my great-grandma’s. And I wanted to hear its voice.
So I left it with them and returned the next week to pick it up. They did a brilliant job with it! And it ended up not being too expensive, in my opinion. The labor charge of $100 was the biggest single component of the cost; then, the all-new strings cost nearly $50, plus new tuning pins and some miscellaneous expenses for glue and such, since they removed old glue and nails and reglued the pin blocks, glued the side seams, seated some loose pins . . . the total ticket came to $172.46. Do you think that was an outrageous expense? I don’t. To me, it’s like buying art: Follow your heart.
About this time, Mom had a reunion with her Trinity Lutheran 8th-grade graduating class. There, she had chatted about the zither with one of her classmates. And that fellow, Jimmy Sommerer, owned one of the original books of music that had been made for these types of instruments. He gave her photocopies of the book. (Samples are in my previous post.) What a neat coincidence!
No, I don’t play much on the zither these days. I’m not very good at it. (The strings all look alike!) That night in Grandma’s backyard might have been my high point! Seriously, I do play it occasionally in the living room or the backyard, but as I’ve said, it’s only good for straightforward tunes. I can do a pretty decent rendition of “Silent Night” and “O Tannenbaum.” (At least they’re rather slow.)
Another thing I’ve liked about it is that when I play my trumpet in the same room as the zither, it rings in sympathetic vibrations with the trumpet. (Musicians have taken advantage of this effect with brass instruments and pianos, where the piano’s sustaining pedal is kept pressed down while a trumpeter or trombonist points her bell into the piano’s raised lid and plays. The effect is eerie and rich—it’s the same principle as with an Indian sitar.) When I play a loud note, especially pointing toward the zither, every string capable of harmonizing with the overtones in the trumpet note vibrates lightly, and with so many strings sounding, the zither exhales a cloud-chord in answer to the trumpet, like an echo. I have always loved that. An echo—in so many ways.
My recent post about the rebirth of my old guitar, and reuniting with its voice, reminded me of a similar triumph of heart and intuition over conventional economic thinking.
In this case, it’s a much, much older instrument—a Columbia Special model no. 2 fretless zither, ca. 1900, which has apparently “kept its value.” Thanks to a small investment from me. On ebay, I’ve seen similar zithers (same brand, about the same size, model, and vintage) that are pretty crapped-out (cracked, no strings, missing parts) being sold for around $30 or $50.Ones in decent shape start around $125 and go up from there, depending, in large part, on how fancy or unusual they are. And mine is in pretty good shape. Hey, you can tune it, play it, and all the parts are there.
I’m betting this zither dates to about 1895 to 1908, and there’s a good chance it was purchased via a Sears catalog. Zithers were also often sold personally, for example by door-to-door salesmen, apparently often by college students making money over the summer. Also, naturally, music dealers also sold them in their shops.
Columbia zithers during this period sold for between 4 and 8 dollars. An old ad I saw online has the no. 3 model selling for $6, so the no. 2 (which this is) was probably at the lower end. If you bought music with it, it would’ve cost extra. Adjusted for inflation, $4 in 1900 would be worth about $124 today—see what I mean? It’s held its value.
Specifications. It’s a “Columbia Special” zither no. 2, manufactured by the Phonoharp Company based in Boston. People today call these types of zithers “chord zithers” or “fretless zithers.” This name distinguishes them from so-called guitar zithers, which have a guitar-like fretboard on the long side that makes a portion of the instrument capable of being fretted and strummed something like a mountain dulcimer.
This is called a “chord” zither because there are dedicated groups of four strings on the long side, and each of these groups is an entire chord that can be strummed at once, as an accompaniment. In this instrument, there are four groups, thus four chords. From left to right (or outside to inside), the chords are C, G7, F, and Am. Which is to say, I, V7, IV, and vi. And that’s all you need to play songs like “Silent Night,” “Yankee Doodle,” “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” “Old Hundred,” . . . hmm, even “I See a Bad Moon a-Risin’.” If you’re singing (and not trying to play) the melody, you can accompany yourself perfectly well with just those four chords. Ta-da!
We know how the strings are to be tuned because there’s a cardboard label attached along the base of the instrument that shows the note for each string. More on this in a second.
To the right of the four chords are fifteen melody strings—two octaves of C major scale, C to C to C: Do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti, do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti, do. It’s like having two octaves of just the white keys of a piano. Sorry, no sharps or flats! You’re pretty much stuck in the key of C major (or A minor), or maybe you can kinda fake it in the keys of F or G, if you skip the B flats or F sharps that are required by those keys. Or, you could retune those notes. Anyway, these melody strings, true to the name, are for plucking the melody with one hand, while you strum the chords with the other hand.
I should note that you can also pluck certain of the chord strings so you can add to the number of low notes you can play, but they’re out of sequence, and you have to know what you’re doing to descend below the C on the melody strings. You’ll have to pick the low B out of the G7 chord, the low A out of the F (or Am) chord, low G out of the G7 chord, low F out of the F chord . . . and whatever. It’s kind of cuckoo at some point.
These zithers were incredibly popular in the early 1900s. As ever, people loved music and wanted to be able to play an instrument in their parlors. Remember: homes had parlors in those days, because people entertained each other in the evenings. Family, friends, neighbors. There was no radio yet, so people had fun by reading, singing, acting, reciting poetry, you name it. Anyone who could play an instrument had a valuable skill!
One big attraction of a zither was that it offered chords as well as melody, something like a tiny piano, and everyone wanted a piano! But it cost a lot to put a piano in your parlor. Not only were pianos expensive, but also they took up a lot of space, were hard to move, required a specialist to tune (and repair), and everyone knew that you needed to practice like crazy to learn how to play it. And pay for lessons. Or, as one zither advertisement put it, “receive a musical education.” Sounds daunting, doesn’t it!
These zithers promised to be more affordable, and they were less expensive, more portable, and came with a new (new-new-new!) method of learning to play that (supposedly) bypassed the drudgery of learning to read music. Each of the melody strings was labeled sequentially with a number (the low C was “1,” the D above it was “2,” C an octave higher than the low C was “8,” etc.), and the zithers came with music notated especially for them. It was basically a sort of tablature, coded so that you could start learning “Yankee Doodle” by plucking the following strings in this sequence: 8-8-9-10-8-10-9, 8-8-9-10-8-7 . . . It’s basically a coded solfège system, with numbers 1, 8, and 15 as “do,” 2 and 9 as “re,” 3 and 10 as “mi,” etc.
Also, to show people which chords to play when, the four chords were numbered 1–4, and those numbers were marked below the music staff in the appropriate places.
To get people started even more easily, there were special cards printed and trimmed to fit underneath the strings that gave an even more visually intuitive way of learning.
So whatever happened to these zithers? They sound so pretty! Here’s what I think.
First, the autoharp, a closely related instrument, is a definite improvement, if all you want is chords. Press a button and then strum all the strings. The strings that don’t belong to a chord are simply dampened by the button mechanism. Press the “G” button, strum all the strings, and you hear a nice, full G chord. You don’t need much skill to figure it out, plus you get a lot more different chords to choose from, so you can play in lots of keys, and with other instruments, too.
Second, playing these fretless zithers is not as easy as their manufacturers made them out to be. You do have to practice a lot to get used to the distances between strings in order to play the melody you want. Which is to say, accuracy is a challenge. Also, the chord strings are grouped so closely together, it’s easy to accidentally pluck adjacent strings.
Additionally, it was probably a pain to tune these zithers. Today, you can use an electronic chromatic tuner that tells you when each string is in tune. In the early 1900s, you had to tune by ear (difficult for an amateur), and you had to get at least one of the notes correct with a tuning fork, pitch pipe, or some other instrument. If you had a piano around, you could tune it to that. But then, if you had a piano around, you probably didn't need a zither. Obviously, if an instrument is not in tune, it's not much fun to play.
Third, they made a confusing variety of zithers—even from the same company. Among Columbia Zithers, there were the 2, 2¼, 2½, 3½, 3¾ etc., plus the Guitar Zither, the Mandolin Harp, the Marxaphone, Celestaphone, etc. All with different configurations and capabilities. The play-by-number system meant that you had to be sure the music booklets you got would work with your instrument you had. Or else it meant that a big book of music might not have many songs that would work for your particular instrument: “Aw, shoot, this song only works for the Zither No. 3¾, and I have a 2.” How frustrating.
Fourth, and perhaps the biggest reason: musical tastes changed drastically in the first few decades of the 1900s, and a younger generation came of age. Zithers were great for playing simple folksongs, hymns, popular sentimental ballads, and so forth, but starting in the 1920s Americans were getting radios and beginning to love jazz! Tastes were changing; people were swingin’!
The Jazz Age is one reason why ukuleles became so popular in the 1920s: with just four strings, you can strum darn near any chord you want, even “weird” chords like diminished and augmented chords, and chords in unusual keys that require barring. These chords make amateur guitarists kind of flinch, but uke players have little problem.
So, while zithers were great for playing earnest, straightforward songs like “The Blue Bells of Scotland,” and “Be It Ever So Humble, There’s No Place Like Home,” people were going nuts over tunes like “Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’-Bye),” with its C#°7, G7#5, Eb°7, and other spicy chords. You just can’t play “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” without a bunch of accidentals.
Anyway, that’s what I think. Regardless, the zither is a treasure to me and a valued connection to my ancestors. More on that in my next post.
I have to say this first: Sue wants me to tell you she is absolutely not a luthier. She doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a person not afraid to try fixing a guitar that’s otherwise destined for the dumpster.
Sorry that I don’t have any “before” pictures to show you, but when something is so depressing as my old guitar was, you just don’t take pictures of it. My old guitar was indeed destined for the dumpster. Or—perhaps—a ceremonial cremation in a backyard bonfire. The bridge had broken completely off of the top of the guitar; it was flopping around, dangling from the 5 strings that hadn’t yet broken. Also, the headstock had some scary cracks and looked like it was about to pop off the neck. The guitar was a goner.
But it was only a goner because it wasn’t worth fixing. This is an inexpensive, beginner’s classical guitar, made in Korea. Although the sound is pleasant, and I like it, it isn’t remarkably brilliant or resonant. No self-respecting guitar repair guru would touch it, because the fix would have been double or triple the worth of the instrument. So, the guitar sat around in its case, and I felt sorry for it. It didn’t ask to be made an inexpensive beginner’s instrument.
Indeed, this is the guitar my parents got for me for Christmas when I was in junior high school. I guess about 1981. I can still picture it, in its odd-shaped cardboard box, leaning against the wall next to the Christmas tree. (That was back when my parents used to put their tree against the north wall of the living room . . .) I would eventually get guitar lessons from a local bluegrass musician, who tried to teach me how to flatpick. (I didn’t quite understand it then, but it wasn’t my style, and it wasn’t the guitar’s style, either. But I learned stuff, anyway, and the lessons helped overall.)
Interesting fact: I’ve Googled this instrument—it’s a Lotus model LC-30, an entry-level classical guitar made from 1981 to 1989. Spruce top, mahogany back and sides, amber finish, black binding, rosewood fingerboard. (Back then, beginner's guitars were made out of solid wood, at least, huh?) Used, they sell for up to about $100 dollars. Most are $10 or $15, “as is,” or “for parts or repair.” There truly aren’t many of these left. I think it’s like a 1985 Ford Escort: everyone who had one, drove it until it fell apart.
But I have an attachment to this guitar, and I respect all musical instruments. They are each unique voices, each a potential channel through which music may sound. Golden potential aching to be fulfilled, even for a few moments of sweetness.
Sue has spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos of various luthiers doing their thing. She finds it highly entertaining and interesting. So after she had watched about 2,000 of these videos (I exaggerate the number), she felt confident enough to at least try fixing my poor ol’ guitar. She hesitated to do so. I had to remind her: Look, this guitar is worthless as it is. You might as well try. If you don’t fix it, it’s no good to anyone, and it’s just taking up space. We have nothing to lose! Have fun with it! Blah, blah, blah.
So, she took it into the basement and went to work. It was basically a gluing procedure—a heavy-duty gluing procedure. That’s a lot of pressure the glue needs to hold!
In addition to regluing the bridge, she worked layers of glue into the cracks in the headstock. Then, she used finer and finer sandpaper to smooth the seams. It’s as smooth as a baby’s butt. (As they say.) She relacquered the headstock and made it shiny again. It’s not perfect, but this guitar has plenty of miles on it. I don’t care what it looks like (much). It matters more to me that it doesn’t fly apart and hit me in the face and put an eye out.
I’d say it’s like a new guitar—but, by golly, it isn’t. And that’s the real magic of it.
Because you see, this guitar has a unique voice. It doesn’t sound like my newer guitar—the one I bought the day I was told by a professional luthier not to bother trying to fix my old guitar. Indeed, my newly fixed guitar sounds exactly like it used to sound!
As soon as I’d put new strings on it, I recognized its voice. Wow, just wow. I hadn’t heard it for years. It’s the voice of the guitar I played in high school, tryin’ to impress my friends. It’s the voice of the guitar I wrote songs on, when I used to do such fanciful and fearless things. It’s the voice of the guitar I used to play out on my parents’ front steps on summer evenings when I was young—learning how to play songs by Carole King, Joan Baez, and Cat Stevens. I played it at the Wilkes Boulevard Methodist Church one Sunday with my friend Karla—we played and sang “Morning Has Broken.” I bet we we warbled adorably. I had a lacy, cotton white dress I used to wear back then, an off-the-shoulder, below-the-knees, broom-skirt, Boho-type thing from Penneys, and I probably wore that. I can't tell you what we might have sounded like (ergh).
The old guitar has a mellow voice, but I learned how to strum brightness from it. It’s the guitar I learned my first real song on—“American Pie”—I remember practicing it in the backyard at the picnic table. G, C, G, D, G, C, G, D . . . After ten thousand verses of “American Pie,” G, C, and D chords were always easy.
I had to play a few choruses of “American Pie” to celebrate this reunion with my old friend.
It’s such a gift to have it back.
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