Songs From My Attic I went up to the attic the other day to see if I could find some papers I had put away some time ago. I hadn't been up there in quite a while. In fact, I hadn't been up there since my wife and I had attempted to do battle with the mess that seemed to grow there like an untended culture in a petri dish. Like all attics, it is a place that is filled with the dreams and discards of our lives, packed away for storage, to be visited from time to time. I walked past an ancient vaporizer, past a wooden canister set that my wife received as a shower gift so long ago, past four of my children's lunch boxes--3 plastic and one metal, past an electric fry pan, an old broiler, and an electric typewriter that no longer typed right. I guess we never had that tag sale we always talked about. I passed the lamp section. Some of them were here when we bought the house and no doubt should have been thrown out right then and there. But they had character and we told each other that all they needed was some elbow grease and some rustolium and maybe we'd be able to salvage them. So they stayed. I saw a lamp tipped on its side, its milky globe looking like it belonged at the top of a barber's pole. It was still attached to a wicker shade which was crushed and broken. I remembered that it used to sit proudly in our first living room over twenty years ago. I felt a pang in my chest. It seemed to deserve better than that. After all, it started when we started, that April of 1970. After a moment I moved on until my eye spotted a box filled with discarded photographs. Carefully I took them out of the box. They were mounted on hard cardboard backs and they used to hang on the walls of our first apartment. There was a large picture of a girl standing on a dune looking out to the sea. I had dabbled in photography in those days and guests would unfailingly ask if the woman in the picture was my wife. We would smile at each other and say no. We loved that one. I dusted off another black and white picture, a close up of an old coal miner's hands, holding a gnarled and twisted cigarette in them. I stared at those hands wondering which killed him first, black lung or the cigarettes. There was one of a forelorn little boy sitting in a carnival booth selling a canopy of balloons, one of a ballerina all alone in the corner of an empty studio, and a long, narrow picture of a crowded train station. The station was filled with rush hour crowds but away from the throng sat a solitary serviceman. I remembered buying this in the early "70's as the Vietnam war was coming to an end. Its message had seemed so clear. I ached for that soldier as he sat there, alone in a crowd. I put them back in their box and moved on towards the back of the attic. I stumbled over three large picture frames, turned them over and uncovered three high school diplomas. They had belonged to my wife's aunts. They were dated 1912, 1915, and 1924. Graduating high school had been the yardstick of academic success back then. The diplomas were over two feet long and a foot and a half wide. They were large enough to hang behind our couch as a focal point of the room. My college diploma, on the other hand, is in a small leatherette booklet that measures about 5 X 7 inches and my Masters degree arrived six months after I graduated, without the leatherette booklet in an envelope courtesy of the United States Postal Service. I decided to make sure that these treasures stayed out of harm's way so I moved them deeper into the attic. And that is when I saw it. It was a suitcase sized box that was tucked into one of those unlit areas in everyone's attic. I set aside the diplomas and dragged the box into the light. It was covered with a fine layer of dust and I wondered why I hadn't seen it before. I had been up there enough times and it wasn't something you were likely to miss. The outside of the box attracted me first. It was heavy and as I heaved it into the light I saw something large and blue printed on its side. It was the N.R.A. Eagle. An actual piece of Roosevelt's New Deal. Underneath the bird was the inscription, "We do our part". The box was tied with twine and I looked for something to cut it. Reaching into my pocket, I retrieved my key chain with the fold-up scissors and snipped the string. I eagerly removed the top, not knowing what I would find. I set aside the lid. There was a layer of yellowed tissue paper inside obscuring the contents from view. I carefully separated the paper. It took a few moments for me to realize what was contained inside this cardboard time capsule. Sheet music. Yes, sheet music. Beautifully illustrated, multicolored, art deco sheet music that dated from the early 1900's to the mid 1930's. There must have been over one hundred pieces of sheet music inside. The box weighed about twenty-five pounds. I flipped through them transfixed. They were so old. So used. Some had their covers torn and others were tattered. One of them had a large coffee stain in the right corner. Someone might have played the piece on a cold winter's night; perhaps alone, but probably in front of the assembled family as dad read the newspapers, mom darned some socks, and the children finished their schoolwork. I rooted through the box, trying to discover who had owned this wonderful collection. In the corner of a piece entitled "Dardanella", which sold for sixty cents and held the illustration of a Clara Bow-type farm girl staring languidly off into her own private world of thoughts, surrounded by a still vivid cobalt blue painted border, was the name of my wife's aunt. She must have been a teenager at the time. I decided to bring this one downstairs and frame it. It was a work of art. I was drawn to another, "Those Golden Days", which pictured two young women dressed in long white gowns with large floppy hats, superimposed over an oval picture of a pastoral scene complete with a babbling brook, a covered bridge, and what looked like a New England farm. It spoke so eloquently of a younger and gentler America whose priorities, once upon a time, seemed to be in order. Soon I had a tiny mountain of sheet music spread around me as I tried to group it into something that approached catagorization. I decided to view them as one would view a time capsule. For I had discovered a part of someone's life, frozen in time. There were undoubtedly many others in her collection but these must have been her special ones. They had been packed away and so they had survived. My wife's aunt was very proud of her Irish heritage and there were many songs about Ireland. I discovered beautifully painted music entitled, "Tip-Top Tiperary Mary", "Ireland is Ireland To Me", "She's the Daughter of Mother Machree," and "That Tumble Down Shack in Athlone". They were well thumbed. They had been played often. I'm sure these were dear to her heart. They had been tucked into a booklet of songs called, "Beautiful Ballads For All Voices". I could just picture them gathered around the piano enjoying them as a family. Families were the centerpiece of their world back then and they drew strength and confidence from each other. But the fabric that bound the family in the 1910's and 20's was clearly the notion of a mother's love. I discovered such songs as, "Ireland Must Be Heaven, For My Mother Came From There", and, "That Old Irish Mother of Mine". But my two personal favorites were, "I'm In Heaven When I'm In My Mother's Arms", and Irving Berlin's famous, "The Hand That Rocked My Cradle Rules My Heart". I can imagine that there hadn't been a dry eye in the house after those two ditties were played. As I sat there on the attic floor swept back to the early 1920's I was struck by how tragic and wrenching World War I had been to those families. Their Doughboy husbands and sons had gone off to the war to end all wars while their loved ones waited, fearfully, desparately for their return. Despite macho songs like, "Over There", which I also discovered in the case-- painted in shades of red, white, and blue-- most of the other wartime songs were filled with poigniant themes. I picked up two pieces of faded music. One pictured a young child saying her evening prayer, her doll at her side. The piece was titled, "Just A Baby's Prayer At Twilight (For Her Daddy Over There)". Another tugged at my heart as a little girl held out her hands toward the Heavens and asked, "Where Did You Leave My Daddy?" Beneath it was song that had a picture of Al Jolson superimposed over a painted nightmare of a battlefield, painted in reds and blacks. In a tiny inset was the silhouette of a little girl speaking into an old fashioned two-piece telephone. She was saying something to an operator. It was called, "Hello Central! Give Me No Man's Land," which was where her daddy was facing his own Hell. That afternoon, I had discovered a box that allowed me to look back at a slice of our history. Just as archaeologists are able to piece together the fabric of a time as they study their newly discovered artifacts, so I was able to feel and touch a piece of American life and values that existed over seventy years before, when life was so much simpler. Carefully, I gathered the treasures that were lying at my feet. They spoke so eloquently of our hopes and dreams. I began to put them back in their box when, once more, a piece of music caught my eye. It was another gem. It pictured a stark night battlefield with French infantry huddled in a trench. Beyond them was barbed wire and exploding shells. Strangely though, all the soldiers were smiling. Above them, as if in a dream, was an doughboy who was saying farewell to his mother. It was called, "If I'm Not At Roll Call, Kiss My Mother Good-bye For Me." The title said more than a thousand textbooks could ever say about traditional values like home and hearth, and the futility of war. I put everything back in the box and returned it to its place. It was time for me to say farewell. But I knew that I would revisit these pages often. There was more that I needed to see and more that I needed to learn. I had just been introduced to some fine old friends.
Copyright © 1994 Steven R. Kravsow |