My great-grandfather, by all accounts, was quite a character. He was born in 1902, the eleventh of thirteen children to a dirt-poor family in Jena, Louisiana. He lived on this earth for some ninety-four years, and those years were filled with colorful adventures. He told stories of hopping trains during the depression era along with various exploits that occurred while riding the rails (he once stated that during a trip to Atlanta, he taught Porter Wagoner some fiddling technique. Probably a tall one, but...) Stories I heard of him growing up painted him as a ragged but right character who lived hard but only got stronger. He worked as a gravedigger until the ripe old age of 73, and was able to keep on keepin' on for another twenty-one years before passing away in April 1996.
By the way, this piece evolved out of a writing challenge posed by Dotty McCormick and Susan Shaffer to Sowela's Creative Writing Club. The title was copped from an old instructional book that I once owned.
It was May of 1998, and my family was in the process of moving into a new home. Our new living quarters had been formerly owned by my great-grandparents, and my great-grandmother was selling the place to move to Many, Louisiana, a place not far from where she spent her youth.
At the time of the move my great-grandfather had been gone from the earth for a couple of years. He had died in that very house and in the room that would become my bedroom. His former abode still held the smell of stale pipe tobacco - Bugler, his brand of choice. One could observe the sheet rock that formed the ceiling above where his old decorative leather chair sat, and see the residue of cigar smoke. There were elements of his existence still tangible.
...and on many of those long nights involved in the moving process, some elements were quite audible.
In a past life my great-grandfather had been a fiddler. In those days, you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone in a rural community who didn’t possess some kind of talent or another. Barn dances were the thing and he, along with siblings and friends, played music in what we might term an embryonic bluegrass style. Fiddles and banjos dominated, playing reels and jigs, but the Foggy Mountain Boys they weren’t. Much of their repertoire was given over to variations on “Turkey in the Straw”. After becoming a family man he didn’t play as much and in his old age he’d put his fiddle away, up in the attic to weather the elements.
On several occasions, on dark, lonesome nights, I could hear fiddle music emanating from the hallway, nearabout the attic entry. I could smell the pipe smoke drifting through the air, as though someone within arm’s reach were puffing away. These experiences were accompanied by the patting of a foot, keeping time to a two-step. It was tempting to chalk these incidents up to the tiring work that relocating involved. However, I would soon find that there was something supernatural about them.
Once we had dumped all of our belongings into our new place, the time came to sort things out. We began filing the junk away in the attic after weeding it out from the essentials. It was at that time we found something that we’d previously been unaware of – my great-grandfather’s fiddle was stored in that attic.
My grandfather was the one who made the discovery. Knowing that I had an interest in music, he brought it down and presented it to me to look at. I opened the case and surveyed the contents. A worn bow with a few remaining horse hairs, slack cat-gut strings with an envelope of spare Black Diamonds, the main item being a worn fiddle.
The fiddle had not been cared for and had obviously suffered due to the elements. Once our discovery had been announced, the heirs had suggested that I take it. In time I learned some technique and a couple of tunes on that old fiddle. By then, the music from upstairs was long gone but every time I picked that fiddle up out of the case and rosined up the bow, I could hear the floor creak and I could smell that pipe, and when I took the bow to the strings I could hear that foot beating in time.
