The banjo

A friend recently asked me if I really did play the banjo.  He had seen my picture on this blog.  I wanted to tell him that not only do I play one but I am very good at it.  But I could not bring myself to lie like that.  So I think that today I will tell the true banjo story and get it off my chest after all these years.

It all started in 1950.  I was going to architectural school at the University of Cincinnati and each weekend I would walk down town just to look around.  I went by a pawn shop every time I walked and there was a four string tenor banjo hanging there for sale.  I asked them how much they wanted for it and was told ten dollars.  I thought that was a very reasonable price.  Only one problem.  I didn't have ten dollars.  So I joined three other students and went to Marion, Ohio and there we dug a swimming pool.  With shovels and a wheelbarrow.  And after three weekends we were paid fifteen dollars apiece.  I bought that banjo.  Then I took the rest of my hard earned money and took banjo lessons.  I had enough money for eight lessons including the sheet music. At the end of that time I could play four songs that I still play today.  I also learned that C, F, & G7 covers a multitude of songs if you sing real loud.

When I went into the Navy I took my banjo with me.  During boot camp I was threatened a lot of times but I was still able to take it with me during my two year time in the Philippines.  When my time was up there they told me that I could go home by air or ship but that I would not be allowed to take the banjo in the airplane.  I was homesick so I opted for air travel.  I gave my banjo to a friend there who didn't really want it and came on home. I thought that was a good decision because I could still only play four songs and I had noticed that my playing cost me a lot of friends.

Years later Linda gave me another banjo for Christmas.  I told you she was a fine woman!  I began to run her crazy as I practiced my four songs.  Then one day we had some friends over for dinner and I began showing pictures I had taken while I was in the Navy.  Two of our visitors were banjo players.  When they saw a picture of me while I was playing one of the guys jumped up and almost yelled to the other, "Bill had a Gibson Mastertone!"  For those of you who do not know much about banjos (And that would include me) a Gibson Mastertone is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars.  And I gave it away to a guy who didn't want it.

I took lessons with the one Linda gave me and after about a year I could play the same four songs along with C, F, & G7.  I played with a banjo band here and they let me play as long as I didn't play very loud.  So you see, that is my banjo story.  I wanted to play a banjo more than I can explain but the biggest lesson I learned was that one has to have talent to play those things no matter how hard one is willing to practice. And so it is a pretty good bet that you will never hear me play.  That's because I love you and don't wish to make you unhappy.

Pray for me, won't you?