A place from my childhood

As a child I grew up just two blocks from Lake Michigan in Chicago. Above is a picture of the park down the street from my apartment building.  Down the way from this park was the Margate Park Fieldhouse which is where my love of the arts was born. Each day after school, my sister and I went there for classes in tap & ballet, drama, art, music. We performed regularly in plays and variety shows. My first music lesson was at this fieldhouse and it was with my mother's clarinet. My lesson was with Mr. Myers who also taught art.  For my lesson, I was to play one note (can't recall which one :) to check my tone and embouchure. When I blew on the horn, a most terrible and unfortunate sound was made that embarrassed and scared me. I was too embarrassed to even look at Mr. Myers but he wrote on my music score a big question mark ? That was my grade and that was the beginning of my musical life!

Needless to say, I never played that clarinet again. My next attempt was the drums as my other art teacher,  Mrs. Elias gave me a pair of drum sticks. I quickly went home and learned every beat to Hawaii 5-0 and Mission Impossible theme songs. I played along to many 45s from then on.  Later, I went on to take drum set lessons and played in my high school band.

When we moved to a new neighborhood in high school, there I met another girl my age who sang as good as Linda Ronstadt and wrote her own songs. That's when I got out my mom's old Harmony guitar that she played during the 60s folk boom (she took some lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music). The rest is history as they say.

I was thinking of all this because today I played at the Blue Ridge Club House again and that place always makes me think of Margate. It was a home away from home, a place where I felt belonging and kinship. I am happy to find myself singing with people now in these settings. We were out on the backporch again while people smoked and talked. Later I paid a musical visit to another assisted living center and we sang the old songs from school.

Today I learned that my high school is giving a 50th Anniversary Band concert in December. We could play in the band and have our parts sent to us. I am soo tempted but don't think I can swing the travel expense and time away. Perhaps I could be Skyped in? :)