Music Lessons Finally Took Hold

I wrote this article in 2010. It was published in the Danvers Herald on March 2010.  I'm re-posting it here to replace a broken link from my related March 2010 blog posting about childhood music influences.)

Music Lessons Finally Took Hold

By Sandy Nichols Ward

"F sharp!" my grandmother called loudly from upstairs above her living room, where I was practicing. "That F should be sharped."  How did she know?  She wasn't looking at the little book of piano exercises in front of me.  Nana's ability to call out corrections from a distant room astounded me.  I hated practicing piano.  I just wanted to go outside.   I figured that the faster I played through the notes in the assigned pieces, the sooner I'd be free to go.  What a disappointment I must have been to my musical grandmother, who supervised my daily practice, and cousin Annie Brewster, who taught me weekly on a piano in her home.  Both Nana and Annie loved music and had a life-long interest in attending good concerts.  For me, however, playing piano was a chore, a daily obligation.  

My father was sympathetic. He spoke of his own dislike for the piano lessons that had been imposed on him, too, at an early age.  I took some comfort in the fact that I was not alone, but why didn't he stick up for me and put an end to this?  I endured these lessons for about five years, until I grew bold enough to protest.  Nana and Annie gave up without a fight, no doubt realizing my lack of talent for piano.

In my teenage years I took up the recorder and taught myself to play simple tunes.  My sister objected to the "noise" I was making, so I walked outside to sit under the trees at Locust Lawn.   To my surprise, the black and white cows grazing there in the pasture stopped, looked up, walked towards me, and then stood in a semi-circle, staring straight at me while I played.  I enjoyed this appreciative audience!  My mother's horse stepped forward in his pasture, too, leaning his head over the fence and listening to the music.   This was MUCH more fun than practicing piano!    No one shouted "F sharp!"

Grandmother's piano, after her death and after we had moved into a larger house, came to us. It sat in the den, right by the heavily trafficked path to and from the stairs, the living-room, the front hall.  Both my father and I, at various stages, played it again.  I experimented with playing hymns from a church hymnal, figuring out how to make the chords with my left hand.  My father got better and eventually, in retirement, purchased an electric organ for the living room and took organ lessons. He really enjoyed playing for guests. 

Meanwhile, I moved to California, played one year in a Recorder Orchestra, and later discovered the joys of playing Balkan folk music.  At a summer workshop I took lessons in bagpipe, which I figured was just a recorder with a bag attached. Wrong!  My skills didn't transfer and I lacked lung power.  I tried an end-blown flute the next summer, but couldn't make a decent sound.  Next I tried tupan, a double-headed drum. Good choice!  As a dancer, I already knew the Balkan rhythms well. It's fun to express them on the drum.  I've been performing in folkdance bands ever since.  When I moved back to New England in the 1990's, I began performing at the New England Folk Festival each April with Panharmonium, a band that practices weekly and plays monthly in Amherst, MA.   I now understand, of course, why my grandmother fussed about each wrong note.   I too cringe at a missed F sharp or other error.  The music lessons, eventually, did sink in.  

Letter about Battle of Bunker Hill

The Battle of Bunker Hill happened on June 17, 1775.

While reading some resources about family genealogy in winter 2023, I encountered a remarkable quote from a letter written by husband Edward to his wife Mary telling her of the happenings.  

* During the revolutionary war, Edward sent Mary and the children off to Nantucket, an island inhabited by peace-loving Quakers who, he presumed, were neutral in the conflict.

* Letter about Battle of Bunker Hill Edward sent to Mary:

Well, my dear, I am heartily glad you are not here just at this time; you would, I know, be most terribly alarmed. We had an appearance yesterday of a most prodigious smoke, which I found was exactly in the direction of Charlestown and as we knew our men were entrenching on Bunker Hill there, we supposed the Town was on fire, and so in fact it proved, for in the evening (that is last evening) we were told the Regulars had landed at Charlestown under cover of the smoke from ye buildings they had set fire to, and forced the Entrenchments on the Hill and had beat our men off with loss, & this morning our intelligence was that 400 of our men were killed & the Regulars had pursued our men as far as Winter Hill; (tho' we just now learned that the Regulars still keep possession of Bunkers Hill, & that our men are entrenched upon Winter Hill) & that there is a probability of further action soon, and that our loss amounts only to about 150 killed. … The commotion here was so considerable, though none of our men went to ye Battle (as the northwest part of the Province and not the sea coast were called upon the occasion) that we had but one meeting house open in ye morning. --and this afternoon while some were at meeting and others talking over ye action of yesterday, we were alarmed with an appearance of smoke at Marblehead, which broke up ye meeting. & the people with their engines & buckets went over to extinguish the fire, and I among the rest, tho' I should have been glad to have been excused on account of the prodigious heat of the weather, but as I thought that under Providence I owed the preservation of my House to the assistance from Marblehead, when we were in the utmost hazard, I could not dispense with going; but we were stopped when about half way there, with an account that ye smoke arose from a field of grass on fire, and that no building was hurt, so I returned home, and am now set down to rest and cool myself, and to give you this account.

[quoted from a website accessed on 2/21/2024: 
https://theholyokes.com/ps01/ps01_152.html ]

Who were Edward and Mary?  Edward was a doctor in Salem named Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke (1728-1829). Mary was his second wife, Mary Vial Holyoke (1737-1802). They had married in 1759, after the death of his first wife. 

In February 2024 I had received an unexpected email from a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Dr. Holyoke. He was contacting me because of an email correspondence his mother Susanne (a descendant of Dr. Holyoke and the first wife, Judith) had had with me in 2015!  I'd forgotten about that, but was glad to be reminded, and to re-read the family information we had then shared.  Susanne's son Peter wrote to inform me that his mother had died in summer 2023; he and his sister are now my link to that branch of the family tree. 

Locust Lawn memories

Here is a copy of what I wrote in a 2009 piece about some memories at Locust Lawn:   

 Remembering Danvers
5/4/09  

Locust Lawn - more memories

By Sandy Nichols Ward

The Locust Lawn property, as I knew it in my childhood, was 35 acres of woods and pastureland along the east side of Nichols Street. The highest point was on top of "Dale's Hill" or "Nichols' Hill" along a stonewall marking the northern boundary of this family property. My father liked to point out a tall tree there and tell stories of climbing up for a good view of Salem Harbor. I saw remains of weathered wooden slats nailed high onto the tree truck as a climbing aid, but the lower ones were missing.  I never climbed to experience that view.  I did climb many other trees, especially smaller ones and those knocked partly over by storms. My sister Jean and friends Janet, Ray, and Gordon often played there with me, bouncing up and down on the bushy branches of hurricane-felled trees, or exploring around the old buildings and foundations.

The huge barn, with the date 1856 visible above the main doors, remained intact for years and provided hours of fun.  Underneath the barn was a surrey with fringe on top, and an old carriage we could bounce in. On the first floor wonderful wooden horse stalls allowed us to play horse (inside the stalls) or horseback riders (sitting astride the high wooden walls, using leather reins we found nearby).  On Halloween my father transformed that barn into a maze of mysteries, with different horrors in each stall.  Upstairs was a huge space for parties; I recall dunking for apples and playing "Red light, green light" with friends. An antique hand-pulled fire wagon carried a long roll of heavy white hose -- too heavy for us to maneuver, though of course we tried.

The former Locust Lawn mansion had been torn down in 1944, but large granite blocks of its foundation stood tall throughout my childhood in the 1950's, providing a setting for games of hide-and-seek, cowboys-and-Indians, pirates, and so forth. We also liked to excavate "treasures" from the piles of old plaster and debris. Fragments of fancy china, an old watering can, and interesting bricks with decorative edges could be found as we climbed up and down the mounds of white plaster and building rubble.

There was beauty, too, at this abandoned site. Snowdrops and other flowers bloomed each spring along the south wall of the foundation. It was lovely to sit there in the warm sun, leaning against a granite block and gazing out over the landscape to the south, the long sloping lawn with grand elm trees and bunches of locust trees.  Locust Lawn was a place of freedom and adventure.  We played on the "dinosaurs" or "dragons" (trunks of fallen trees bleached white in the sun). We pretended to be cows in the pasture, and when the real cows weren't looking, we licked their salt licks, those big blue or pink cubes the farmer set out in the field.  My mother was disgusted at this idea, but we claimed to always lick on the "other side" where cows hadn't licked!

One summer the foundation provided a "job" and spending money for me and friends. My parents planned to build a new house on the site, which they were buying from the great aunts, and my mother wanted to use old-style bricks for the new fireplace. She paid us "a penny a brick" to dig out old bricks.  My friend Ann O'Connor and I worked hard in the hot sun and stacked up an impressive pile of salvaged bricks.  I was paid $4.00 for  my neat stack of 400 bricks!  The new house built in 1957 was a large Colonial, but not large enough to cover all the old site.  My father preserved one end of the foundation with a nice granite stairway, hoping to create a swimming pool, if only he could figure out how to water-proof the walls and floor.  Instead, my mother created a lovely sunken garden, which she enjoyed for years. Even on a cold winter day she could sit down there out of the winds, reading her newspaper in the protected, sunny "rockery" or garden. Many happy memories!

Last summer [2008] I drove back to Danvers to examine what might be left of this house and rock garden. Gone!  Nothing left but a slight depression in the ground with a few old bricks sticking out among clumps of daisies and other wildflowers. What a rush of nostalgia!  Truth to tell, I'm more nostalgic for that old site (its bricks and flowers) than for the new house I'd live in as a teenager.