GreatRidge Station

I think I’m losing my edge. I called up AAA to cancel my membership.

It did not go well.

• I don’t do well with phone-mazes. This amounts to a game of pick the least irrelevant of all the following irrelevant options. For hub-cap polishing advice, press or say 1; For information about where you put your keys, press or say 2; If you own a pre-1940 automobile in any color other than black, please press or say 3; If you wish to add family members, please press or say 4. (Incidentally, I’m not sure I want AAA involved with any “begetting” that might happen–seems irrelevant unless you own a Nash).
• Wait times. It’s never a good sign when the phone-maze tells you: “We are experiencing higher-than-usual call volume. Your wait will be more than 10 minutes, and less than 12 years.”
• Hold-messages. “We’re more than just automobiles. We’re also cruise vacations, and overseas travel experts.” Yeah. If I had the money to go to any of those places, do you really think I’d be calling you from Minnesota during a snowstorm?

With all of that happening, you can usually add an obnoxious customer service person to that list. Not this time. Much to my surprise, she was quite helpful and courteous. As I hung up, I realized that I went in “loaded for bear,” but instead, I think I might have actually been polite.

How unusual.

In my Monday post, I mentioned Shaped-note/Sacred harp Singing. It’s an odd but beautiful art form. I mean no unkindness here, but the singers tend to “beller” rather than sing. The shape of the note indicates the note to be sung, and this unique folk-art is rhythmic and engaging.
I found this, on YouTube. “Bound For the Promised Land” is the first song here.

Last year, at Christmas, my sister and I spent Christmas night going page-by-page through the old church hymnal that we grew up with. She would play the piano, I would sing, and she would harmonize, and we did that for every song we knew (and we got to 207 before we quit). This year, we plan to pick up where we left off.

Thanksgiving is considered the start of the holiday season by many. For us, it’s the start of the singing around the piano season. At Thanksgiving this year, my aunt (we call her Snooks), my niece, and my sister were in the dining room playing cards together. I went to look for a particular song that I wanted to sing. I finally found it, in an old hymnal originally designed for acapella shape-note/sacred harp singing. A few minutes later, my niece came into the room, evidently needing a break from the card game. I asked her to play the song for me.

She sat down at the piano, looked at the page, and then looked at me: “Four sharps? I can’s play four sharps.”

I encouraged her to try, but she was right. She couldn’t play four sharps (in all fairness, she couldn’t sight-read four sharps–with a little work she could: She’s a very capable pianist).

My niece left the room, and a few minutes later, her mom (my sister) came in: “I can play four sharps. Let’s see it.” She sat down at the piano, then looked at me: “Oh, yuk. I hate the shape of these notes. I can never play out of this book.”

She, too, was right.

At that point, my mom, who was sitting at the computer, chimed in: “Am I ever going to get to hear you sing that song?

“I hope so. There’s one piano player left, and the only excuse remaining is I can’t see well enough to read the notes.”

Seconds later, my aunt Snooks comes into the room, and announces: “I brought my glasses so I can see the page.”

With that, my mom and I burst out laughing: “You better be able to play it, because you just spent the only remaining excuse!”

She played (wow, four sharps!), and I sang (on key). A few minutes later, after a lot of laughing and general good fun, she went back to the dining room. The card game resumed, mom won her game of solitaire, and I went back to thumbing through the music books.

Together, we had made a memory.