Title: O - Opa's Old Organ... And others!
Tags: A-Z
Blog Entry: If you have met me on 'The Hill' before, you will know that I am a huge fan of music; anything that produces harmonious sounds, from any instruments and a select number of voices. I give the credit to my Opa and my Dad for setting me on my life's musical journey. My dad was a cattle driver in the Cypress Hills of southern Alberta, and even though he travelled light, he told me that he always had a mouth organ in his pocket. He told me that even though he wasn't a very good player, it kept the cattle calm. In his later years, he would sit on our back deck on a summer evening, enjoying the view of our valley, and playing his favorite music. My second influence came from my maternal grandfather. When we went to visit him, he would let me "experiment" on his pump organ (also known as a Harmonium). It wasn't easy because my legs were too short to pump the bellows and play the keys at the same time. But when he played it, it sounded wonderful. It was Opa who gave me my first piano when I was about five years old, and that piano is still in our family. I started piano lessons that same year because there was a piano teacher on a dairy farm quite close to us. When we moved to the city, my parents found a good teacher for me and my musical journey continued. By the time I was about to enter high school, I had already been playing the piano at our church, and when a new organ appeared in the sanctuary, I was fascinated. It had two keyboards, and even a full keyboard to be played with the feet. When I told my music teacher about it, he asked if I would like to learn how to play it. He was aware of a church about a block from my high school, and the organist was a friend of his, and was sure that I could practice on that organ before or after school. If my parents would give their permission, he would arrange to start lessons that summer. You can only imagine the begging, and wild promises of jobs I would do to earn some money for those lessons. Permission was granted if I kept my marks in high school above 50 percent, and I found a job. Success! My first high school job was at a Photography Studio, a block from my high school, where I learned to color tint photographs. No color film at that time, so wedding photos and personal portraits were tinted for that "special effect".By the way, my music teacher played that organ at our wedding in 1963. What a treat! During that particular musical adventure, my teacher took me to a downtown church where I could play on a pipe organ (when the church was empty), and the majesty of that sound rang in my ears many, many times, especially during the three years that I was in nursing training and had only limited access to a piano. Then I moved to a small town to work as a registered nurse in a 19-bed hospital. That was where I met a small organ in a church called a Spinet Organ. Not bad, but at least it was an organ. I participated in Sunday morning worship services when I wasn't at work. The most special organ in my musical journey came when our family moved to the country. Because we had a large living room, my husband bought a Heinzman concert organ which I enjoyed for a lot of years. When friends came to visit, or we had a larger group of friends in for a Sunday evening Hymn Sing, that organ helped make our attempts to sing (in harmony at times) to make our living room sound like we were in church. Nobody ever told us that we could have church in our home. Two more organs were later added to my experience. On one of our trips to England to visit relatives, we spent a day at the Dorset Steam Fair, where we were introduced to a myriad of steam tractors and trucks, plus a number of calliopes. They reminded me of music I had heard in old movies. Each calliope was beautifully decorated, and for me, the sounds was almost haunting. The second organ that we bought, due to reduced space when we "down-sized", was electronic. Depending on what combination of switches were activated, the sound of many instruments, orchestrations, or style of music, it could be set to play without my help. In my opinion, the sound it produced, supposedly of a concert organ or a pipe organ, fell far short of the real sound, and I rarely played it. I now enjoy CDs of organ music and many other types of music, with much less effort. I did lose one organ due to health challenges, but that's another story.
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