TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 166

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 1, 2000000007


Dear Spring Chickens,

	It is March now.  I had a hard time 
transitioning from February.  I typed February 
and had to go back, erase it, and consciously 
spell out M A R C H.  March is the month of many 
birthdays.  Feyna and Meyshe will be twenty on 
the thirteenth.  My mother will be eighty seven 
on the twenty second.  My step son, Ben, will be 
thirty two on the twenty fifth.  There used to be 
the additional wedding anniversary for my parents 
on the nineteenth.  That's a lot of parties and a 
lot of presents.  I want to do something special 
for Meyshe and Feyna this year, its being their 
twentieth.  They will no longer be teenagers.  In 
ten years, they will be thirty.  What to get 
them?  A promise was made to them when they were 
quite little.  If they refrained from smoking 
until their twentieth birthdays, they would be 
rewarded with five hundred dollars.  We thought 
about offering one hundred dollars, but even back 
then, that sounded too inconsequential.  Not 
smoking is big.  If you make it to your twentieth 
birthday not smoking, chances are better that you 
won't start.  If I could afford the thousand 
dollars, that would certainly be a big present. 
But that was promised to them anyway, and I 
should get them a present in addition.  Okay. 
Someone tell me what to do.  Something momentous. 
A vacation with Mom to Point Reyes for a couple 
of days.  A ride in a hot air balloon.  A train 
ride to Los Angeles and then go to Disneyland 
(they're too old for it).  A train ride to 
Seattle and visit their cousin Ari, his partner, 
Laura and their little one year old, Lumen.  I 
could give them a choice.  I could give Meyshe a 
Tibetan Tanka, and Feyna a hundred dollar gift 
certificate at Amoeba Music.  Something more 
personal for Feyna.  A dressing for the blisters 
she got walking from the BART station to the job 
training session yesterday.  That's personal. 
They gave everyone in the training class an 
assignment.  They were to come up with two 
hundred names of people they could make a 
presentation to about the knives and other 
cutlery that the company manufactures in New 
York.  This is top of the line stuff.  A scissors 
that comes apart and can go in the dishwasher. 
Handcrafted knives.  Two hundred!?  Who can spare 
losing two hundred friends?  I thought the 
company was going to supply the customers.  This 
sounds fishy.

	What to get them for their birthdays?  A 
cake, my special way of making salmon.  Beets, 
rutabagas and carrots grated coarsely and sauteed 
in butter and coriander.  Or matzoball soup? 
Cheese bread.  There's the dinner suggestions, 
but I still have to get them presents.  Someone 
help me.




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The legend of Chalfont-Haddon Hall


	During my late teens and early twenties, 
whenever LABINDUSTRIES went to the FASEB 
(Federated American Societies for Experimental 
Biology) conventions in Atlantic City, I came 
along.  My job was to stand in the booth 
demonstrating the instruments and taking names 
for the mailing list, handing out brochures, 
explaining why our products were the best and the 
cheapest on the market.  Actually, that was true. 
And I felt confident in saying so.

	One of the things that was a plus at the 
FASEB conventions was that the exhibitors and 
registered attendees organized chamber music 
gatherings.  There were quite a few very good 
musicians among the 17,000 attendees and 
exhibitors.  Everyone brought their instruments 
and sheet music, signed in beforehand and got the 
mailing instructing them where to meet and when. 
My father would bring his violin, and I brought 
my cello.  Travelling with a violin was easy.  He 
just brought it on board and stashed it under his 
seat.  But travelling with a cello was another 
story all together.  My cello case was an old 
beat up, bent plywood construction with many 
latches and a lock.  It was cumbersome and heavy, 
probably well over twenty pounds.  To carry it by 
the handle became prohibitive for any distance. 
The hand would start aching pretty soon, and it 
completely altered my gait, having to counter 
balance the weight on the other side by leaning 
over, trying to prevent the big wooden box from 
slamming into my hip with every step.  So my 
father bought a simple dolly, one that you might 
use to cart a few boxes.  I threaded it with 
bungee cords and strapped the cello to it.  Then 
I could just drag the cello behind me.  It was a 
lot easier, and probably saved my right arm from 
being permanently damaged hoisting that cockeyed 
heavy thing everywhere I went.  But then the 
dolly added weight and volume to the entire 
package, and this was not good when it came to 
travelling in an airplane with it.  It was a 
sturdy case, but required me to request that they 
hand carry it into  storage, and prevent it from 
freezing by putting it in a pressurized area.

	I'd get up to the head of the line at the 
ticket counter and present my I.D. and tickets. 
Then they'd stare down their noses at this huge 
hulking instrument and ask if I'd bought a seat 
for my trombone.  Sometimes they insisted that I 
had to buy a seat for it, sometimes half a fare, 
sometimes whole fare, so that it could sit in the 
cabin with me.  Well, this would not be a total 
loss.  I could have my cello sit next to me and 
it would get its own meal, its own call button, 
its own blanket and pillow.  That's just as you 
would expect it to work if you were sane.  But 
the airlines who wrote the rules were not sane. 
First, you'd be forced to buy it a seat, then 
they'd tell you it couldn't sit next to you.  It 
would have to go in storage below deck.  Why buy 
a ticket for it, then?  And there were times when 
it was the insurance that was the major issue.

	"You want to insure that?"

	"Yes.  For twelve thousand dollars."

	"Sorry, we can't do that.  Too much."

	Eventually, I thought I had it down.  I 
would not mention that it was a musical 
instrument at all.  I'd just say,  "This needs to 
be hand carried on and off the plane.  It needs 
to be in a pressurized cabin."  Then they'd call 
their hand carrier and have him (always him) 
wheel it away into the invisible guts of the 
airport.  I'd sit at my seat on the window and 
watch for the cello to be hand carried onto the 
plane.  Sometimes I did catch a glimpse of the 
effort.  I never caught them tossing it or 
crushing it under other baggage.  And it never 
arrived broken or dented.  There were a few times 
that it came up the ramp at the baggage claim and 
slid down the carousel, where I rushed the other 
passengers to grab it off the round-about and 
inspect it right there on the spot.  And there 
was some complication if they found out it was a 
cello and thought I was a professional performer. 
There must have been a whole other rule book for 
that.  There was a surprise waiting for me every 
time I presented us at the ticket counter.  I 
never could predict what set of rules the 
employee of the hour went by.

	We stayed in Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, one 
of the grand old hotels on the boardwalk.  It had 
a hundred meeting rooms available for use, that 
the organizers of the chamber music contingent 
must have arranged, and even an auditorium with a 
stage and piano.  That would be the place 
everyone would assemble with their instruments 
and sheet music the first night of the 
convention.  It would be the intellectual set: a 
lot of natty tweed jackets, sweaters and corduroy 
pants.  There were musicians of every instrument 
and every level of accomplishment.

	When I was nineteen, I remember showing 
up for that first night where we essentially 
chose up sides, and straining my eyes to see what 
instrumentation was available for the music I'd 
brought along.  I stood there with my cello case, 
resting my arms on its head and surveyed the 
room.  I saw a clarinettist warming up his reed, 
and a person standing next to him was a pianist. 
They had come together.

	I shouted out, "The Brahms A minor Clarinet trio!"

	And both of them lit up with happy grins. 
I dragged my cello over to them.  We shook hands 
and introduced ourselves.  We claimed the piano 
in the grand hall.  We set up, grabbed chairs, 
opened up our music stands and started going 
through our sheet music.  After considerable 
rummaging, we had to admit that none of us had 
the piece with us.  We stared at each other with 
disbelief and disappointment.  The Brahms A minor 
clarinet trio is absolutely beautiful.  That's 
what we wanted to play.  It starts with a cello 
solo, no accompaniment, just a lone cello singing 
a soaring and falling melody that haunts the 
soul.  And that's what I did, then.  I just 
started playing from memory.  I closed my eyes, 
put the part in front of me and read it.  When it 
was time, the piano and the clarinet came in with 
their parts.  We played the entire piece from 
memory, with a little prompting in places.  When 
it was finished, we were triumphant, ecstatic, 
heady with the voluptuousness of one of Brahms' 
last chamber works, opus 114.  We congratulated 
each other on our accomplishment and dug into the 
sheet music we'd brought to find more things we 
could play.  We were a team for the rest of the 
convention.  It became a legend in the FASEB 
chamber music evenings: the three musicians who'd 
never set eyes on each other before that night, 
who played the Brahms A minor trio by heart, 
because they'd all forgotten the sheet music.



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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net