The usual meaning for the term “keyboard warriors” is those angry trolls who make sure social media is always stirred up with arguments and untruths.

For our purposes, though – and during Teach Music Week – we’ll look at the keyboards that tie our family together.

Piano keyboards.

Dad remembers taking piano lessons when his family lived in Lowell in the early 1940s. He was ten or 11 and would walk just a few blocks to get to Mrs. Salmonson’s house on Daniels Street.

“I was not too happy about it,” he confesses. “I usually practiced for a half hour a week, right before heading out for my next lesson.

“She was a nice lady. She put up with a lot.“

When the Vayos moved to New Haven, Dad continued the lessons. This time, with a Catholic nun. His mom learned piano from nuns, too, and was classically trained from childhood. She especially liked Viennese and French composers from the Romantic era. Grandpa, on the other hand, played popular tunes by ear.

Dad doesn’t recall the nun’s name, but remembers her as being nice.

Very nice. Well, all except for the recitals.

He still remembers what he played, so it must have been pretty traumatic.

First year, it was a piece called “The Old Refrain.” I admitted to not being familiar with it, so Dad hummed a few bars.

Still nothing.

But, of course, it’s on YouTube if you’d like to listen one rendition (I still don’t recognize it, I’m sorry to say):

The second year of piano lessons, there was a second recital. Poor Dad, the title of his piece was prophetic:

Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique

“I got stuck in the middle,” Dad remembers with a laugh. “So I just kept repeating what I knew.”

That was the end of his piano lessons. He still plays, though, beautifully.

Dad’s recital story flashed me back to my horror story. It was in Fairfield, and my teacher was Eleanor Hammermeister. What a name! I was in eighth or ninth grade and the recital was performed for parents and grandparents.

The front part of the music store had been rearranged to make room for the audience as well as the huge grand piano.

Looking back, Ms. Hammermeister would have been well advised to have us each practice a few times on that behemoth. It was very different from the piano in her studio and our Wurlitzer at home.

Well. When it was my turn, I sat down on the tufted bench and began to play. Then something went terribly wrong.

The keys moved. Shifted sideways. I was hitting a moving target.

After a minute or so of this torture (I kept playing, wondering who had broken this beautiful instrument), I felt a hand grip my right shoulder. Then a familiar voice hissed in my ear: Start over! You’re using the wrong pedal!

Indeed. Instead of the far-right “damper” or “sustain” pedal, my foot had landed on the far-left “soft” pedal. It not only muffled the sound, the keys jumped sideways every time I pressed it.

Apparently that’s how the softening takes place. Pressing the pedal causes a “slight” shift so that that hammer doesn’t hit all three strings, but only one or two. Perhaps “slight” is in reference to the movement on a spinet piano. On a grand piano, the movement was … grand.

Much like my father, I gave up piano lessons after that awful experience.

A funny recital story involves John. He was ten or so and the Hometown Music student recital was in a large church in Huntingburg. Mom and Dad were here for a visit, so it was extra nice.

As John walked across the “stage” to the grand piano (I’d warned him about that darn pedal thing), he looked confident. As he took his seat, he sat up straight and dramatically lifted his arms. And cracked his knuckles.

You know, like Bugs Bunny. The audience chuckled its approval.

Thankfully, John didn’t pull a carrot out of his pocket.

My brothers and I took piano lessons when we were kids. In Pittsfield, Harry, Dave and I stopped by a duplux on Livingston Avenue once a week for a half hour with Mrs. Bullock.

Mrs. Bullock. Mrs. Irving C. Bullock. I always wondered if she had a first name, because I never heard one mentioned. She was a nice lady, a widow.

One of my strongest memories of Mrs. Bullock is her delight in the year 1966. As she wrote that day’s date on my assignment pad, she said – for an entire year – “Nineteen Sickety-Six.” As much as I liked her, I got mighty sickety-sick of that by October or so.

Of the four of us, Dave was the one who really took off with piano. He played every waking second, or so it seemed. It would have been a great excuse for me, when slacking off, to whine: “How can I practice my half-hour a day? Dave is always on the piano!” Mom was one step ahead of me. She gave us assigned times for mandatory practice and Dave respected them.

He’s still playing:

My next opportunity to try to weasel out of piano lessons was when the cost of a lesson went from $2.50 to $3.00. Trying to show my concern for family finances, I offered to drop lessons. Mom thanked me for my willingness to sacrifice for the good of the order and promised to let me know if it ever became necessary. It never did.

Next, we moved to Fairfield. Mom found an exceptional team of piano teachers for Harry and Dave. Murray and Loretta Dranoff were top knotch.

I again offered to drop lessons, and Mom promised just a few more years and then I could stop. That’s when she found Ms. Hammermeister, who quickly determined everything I’d learned in five years of lessons was wrong and I needed to start over. So back to the little nursery rhymes and simple tunes it was. I figured it was a scheme to sell a bunch more piano books, as I zipped through them a week at a time.

Bill was finally old enough to join the fun. Dad remembers his youngest hated taking lessons from Ms. H. (Bill doesn’t even remember taking lessons in Fairfield, so that tells you something.)

In the fall of 1973, we moved again. This time to Carmel, Indiana. Mom received a letter back that she’d mailed to Mrs. Bullock; it was marked as undeliverable. Saddened, she wrote this poem:

In Memoriam

Where are you now, dear Mrs. Bullock?
Roses cover the wall with spring.
I send you letters that never come back with anything.

The children trudged to your yellow house
flowering out of the Berkshire snow.
Your music followed them home like a stray they wouldn’t know.

Distance and years nail up the shutters,
stairways crumble and gates are shut.
The key I carry around with me must open something secret, but

the room I enter is always my own.
The hopscotch piano is no more.
The music that meets me romps like the stray let in the door.

~ Joan Vayo, June 3, 1974

Now that search tools such as Newspapers.com are a few clicks away, I see that Mrs. Bullock passed away exactly two weeks later, at age 81. She’d been in a nursing home and hadn’t received Mom’s cards.

And her first name was lovely: Arvilla.

Rest in peace, Mrs. Bullock. It wasn’t your fault I stunk at piano.

Although Gary doesn’t play a musical instrument, he was always supportive of our boys taking lessons.

Tom, John, and James branched out musically to play not only piano, but electric and acoustic guitar and bass, drums, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, and voice. I think there may be a banjo and some bagpipes at John’s house, too.

On the the next generation!

Our grandson, Cameron, decided he’s ready for piano lessons during this time of Covid-19 isolation. As others take to social media to wage a battle of opinions and rumors, young Cam is the true keyboard warrior, as he uses the internet to carry on a treasured family tradition.

Coda: A few weeks after posting this, our grandson Cameron played several tunes for us on our piano. From “Baby Shark” to Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9,” we enjoyed them all. Especially this exchange that followed (reminder, he calls me Goose):

Cam: Goose! Did you hear me playing piano? That was “Ode to Joy”!
Me: Oh, yes! That was so beautiful! Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” is one of our favorites!
Cam: Wait! You know BEE-toven?
Me (trying not to laugh): Yes! When Papaw and I got married, “Ode to Joy” was one of the songs they played.
Cam: Goose! You and Papaw are married?!

“In Memoriam” © 1974 Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.

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