Shinn the Writer

Temptation!

 

No doubt about it, I love garage / estate sales. I have to be careful not to buy things that will take up too much space and re-clutter my house, but I’ve been good at that. Right now, I’m looking for a replacement or two for a couple of small, plastic chests that just don’t look good, especially the one in my kitchen. I don’t care too much about the looks of the ones in my laundry room, because laundry rooms are generally unseen by visitors. They just have to be functional, but still…

 

So I recently found myself at a local estate sale and poked my head in. I found no replacements for my existing low-class furniture, but my eyes were suddenly grabbed by a blast from my past. For a mere $75, I could walk away with a clarinet.

 

Clarinet was the first serious instrument I ever played. I was nine when I started. Before that, I’d had a plastic ukulele that I sat on, and a tonette, an instrument somewhat akin to a recorder and used to usher third-graders into the world of instrumental music. And I’d had a small tom-tom with an Indian… er… Native American head painted on it, but none of these really qualified as “serious”.

 

I remember learning clarinet really quickly at first, proving to be one of the better musicians in our fourth-grade band, but drifted to the middle of the pack as my desire to practice the instrument lagged behind the need. I chose clarinet because my dad had been a big Benny Goodman fan, though in retrospect saxophone would have been a better choice. It became much more popular than clarinet in the world of rock and roll.

 

My interest in clarinet continued to wane in junior high school until I was in the back row of four. My sister was playing violin, and had somehow had a conversation with the junior high band director, and the two apparently decided that I might be inspired by switching to oboe. The other oboe player was going to move on to high school the next year and a replacement was needed. I was loaned one an oboe and set about the task of learning. George (the other oboist) was really quite good and later became the principal oboist for the Nashville Symphony. I never developed skills anywhere near his, and reverted back to clarinet for my sophomore year before giving up on it altogether. I simply found it impossible to sing while playing either of these two instruments.

 

I then tinkered with flute for a few years when a dear friend’s parents gifted her with a high-end flute which she played at the college level. She plays flute in a community orchestra to this day. I put flute aside, but then decades later picked it back up and showed off my skills playing Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country” in my rock and roll band. I then picked up sax and got to the point where I could have played it publicly. It turns out that if you can play any of the these four woodwinds (clarinet, oboe, flute or sax) it’s not too difficult to learn the others. But I find I have no venue for either flute or sax (which I still possess) and my interest in them is waning.