Forum Activity for @dana-r-mccall

Graduation 1975

Here's one from my teenage hippy days... (I'm the blond one) I think it was around 1967 and I must have been 13 or 14.
I remember buying that fur coat at the Salvation army for like $3. Right away my friend Susan got one too. LOL!

Great Gobbs of Goose Grease I've lost my SNARK!!! and my dulcimer is out of tune. It is my favorite and most valuable accessorie. I can't live without it. I need to learn to tune by ear. What am I going to do till I get another one?

My Instrument Acquisition Disorder is no longer Obsessive Compulsive, so now it's just IAD. You can't be OC when you don't have the cash! You must be on your guard, though. Yesterday we were at an antique store in Bath when the woman said there was a music store across the street. I crossed over to find the most disorganized, untidy store I'd ever seen. But, when I was about to go, the man opened an old box to show me a much older banjo mandolin inside. I had to back out quickly - it would have been a great project.

My OCIAD days resulted in so many guitars, banjos, and so forth (including amps and a P.A. system)that one time when I set up for a concert, one of the band members walked in and said, "Is there a sale?" And that was just the stuff I'd brought for the show. I culled mostly by giving or trading away. My daughter now owns my 1929 Martin. Some stuff got stolen.

Then there are "the ones that got away" - stuff I passed up, like the banjo-mandolin yesterday, and the old Gibson mand-cello I should have bought, and the Grit Laskin twelve-string. I had the cash in my pocket, but I wanted to hear it played along with a six-string, and the guy said he was busy. He was reading the newspaper. I walked out.

My first pennywhistle was a Clarke's (still have it). I'm down to a couple of Generations (silver Bb and D) that haven't escaped, and my old copy of The Pennywhistle Book. In the mid-eighties my grade sixes, many of whom were in Instrumental Music, got hooked on whistles when I brought some in and showed them (I still can't play for beans). So I made periodic trips downtown to a music store where I'd pick up a few and the kids would pay me for them. At least they had something they could actually own, and they were learning the basics on flutes, clarinets, and other band instruments. That was the best class I ever had, not just for the music.

I, too, have other things - a couple of Kalimbas (plus one made from a gourd), a turtle shell banjo, one-piece wooden spoons from a woodworking shop east of Quebec City, a tambourine, a couple of washboards. That's the stuff you can leave lying around at a party or jam session so that everyone can get involved.