Playing Banjo

And a love story…

I never learned how to play any instruments when I was a kid so at 38, not wanting to turn 40 never having learned an instrument, I bought a banjo and started taking Saturday banjo lessons with Eddie at South Austin Music. He taught me how to play using tabs instead of music symbols, so it was pretty straightforward and easy to learn.

I was happy just learning the basics and so didn't practice enough to build up speed, but I could play a few easy songs like "O, Susanna" and "Dueling Banjos."

For real.... Dueling Banjos is actually really simple to play just playing the notes but my speed was nonexistent, so once I got past the Yankee Doodle Dandy intro, my playing of it was pretty much unrecognizable. A very, very slow Dueling Banjos.

But I could play it (and note for note and damn proud of it too).

One Saturday about a year into my lessons I went to the Harwood, Texas, second Saturday bluegrass jam and potluck.

Harwood is not even a town, really. Just a community hub for farmers and ranchers with a post office, coin-operated laundry, and feed store situated on a block-and-a-half long sidewalk across from some railroad tracks, nine miles east of Luling on Highway 90 and smack in the middle of enormous flat Texas fields.

The second Saturday bluegrass jam took place in this very old long building that served as the school and library and meeting place. People from Luling and Austin and San Antonio and small towns near and far jammed in groups of two to thirty all day on the front lawn, ginormous back porch, and in smaller classrooms. Then on the cafeteria stage, small groups would sign up for performance slots.

As I pulled up, I could hear Soldier's Joy playing in the distance and parked in the dirt between two pick-up trucks. As I entered the community center I passed a couple of very old men talking under a tree (one holding a fiddle and the other a guitar), some little girls playing hopscotch near the entrance, and a woman in her forties sitting on a bench tuning her bass, who pointed me toward the kitchen, where I dropped off my store-bought rolls to a woman who looked exactly like my grandmother's older sister Aunt Red.

Further down the breezeway, I turned into an auditorium. A thin man sitting at a table by the door asked if I wanted to sign up to play. I said, ''No, thanks," and looked around at the smattering of people listening to two very old men with guitars and a woman with a banjo playing the hell out of Salt Creek up on the cafeteria stage. It was just after ten, and by early afternoon the room would be filled.

After a few songs I wandered down the hall and out onto the huge back porch where a good thirty people from ages 11 to 80 were standing in a huge circle playing Sally Goodin.

Dayum... the musicianship... Just omifuckinggawd...

I pulled out my banjo and stood at the back of the circle but just listened, too shy to play... would never have been able to keep up but was about as happy as I could remember.

The music... and that blue sky... and those friendly people.

After a couple of hours, a woman with glasses and very coiffed gray hair came out on the porch and rang the lunch bell, "Y'all, come on!"

The line into the kitchen was out into the hall, almost down to the auditorium, but it was moving fast. The smells were heavenly. The buffet tables were set up inside the kitchen in the middle of the room in a big square and were overflowing with brisket, chicken, tamales, sausage, steaming trays of mashed potatoes and green beans, cole slaw, hot buttered corn, green salad, ambrosia, red jello salad, baskets of sliced white bread, softened butter and honey bears to go with homemade cornbread muffins, and yes, there my store-bought rolls sat too.

Desserts and sweet tea, coffee, lemonade, and cokes were laid out with chests of ice and plastic red cups on separate long red-checked covered tables.

We all filed into the cafeteria to eat at long white wooden picnic tables and listen to all the small groups who signed up for the stage show.

I sat by myself at the back of the cafeteria and kept a close eye on this couple in their seventies seated a little ways down from me. He was this very tall skinny cowboy gentleman with a black hat and big silver buckle and she was pretty in her yellow and pink flower-printed cowgirl shirt and green slacks.

Well, they were holding hands and sitting right butt up beside each other and he would get up and fetch her more sweet tea and dainties and she would smile as he set back down and shyly stroke his arm and gaze up at him.

Lord! So at one point as he was off talking to a friend and the stage groups were changing I boldly went over and introduced myself to her and asked her how many years their beautiful love affair had been going on?

She set her hand on my arm, "Oh, honey, we're not married."

She explained they had met at a mutual friend's funeral, had been dating six months, and he always parked his car around the block when he stayed over so their children wouldn't nag them.

DUH... They were acting exactly the way all people who are newly in love act.

I don't have my banjo any longer. I quit playing for years during my depression and I eventually bartered it for my friend Max to give to his kids in exchange for his directing my one performance piece (for Frontera Fest 2018), when I told my happy story of recovering and coming back to life.

I am happy being a consumer of all kinds of music instead of a player. But it was fun playing that banjo for a few years there.