A new stereo

The Good Life; The Oscar Peterson Trio

In the early 1900’s, sisters Bertha and R. Esther E. grew up on a farm in South Dakota. By the time they and their siblings were in their teens, rural life had set the stage for a marvelous life. South Dakota weather had acquainted them with the melancholy of a late autumn afternoon and the renewal of a fresh, early spring morning. They were socked in by winter storms for days on end and, in the wake of any given blizzard, sledded down 40-foot drifts in the lane east of the trees. No doubt, in the summer, after collecting eggs, doing the dishes and tending to a menagerie of animals, they skitted through the trees, rode their bicycles on country roads, played in the barn, took walks in the pasture … and absorbed from the tree-spare, openness of the plains an almost tactile perspective of humility; the world is way too big to be very much about any one of us and to help each other is to help ourselves.

My sisters and I grew up on that very same farm on the other end of the 1900’s. The shelterbelt around our acreage was a magical forest. The lane north of the trees was a provincial road miles away from the 20^th century. From the top of the haystack out in the alfalfa field you could see the lights of towns 20 miles away and the stars burned at a much higher voltage than anywhere else. No cologne anywhere can compare with the potency of almost 300 yards of lilac bushes on a Memorial Day afternoon. And on the stillest day, when milkpod seeds hover in the air with no purpose of direction, when your skin yearns for the tiniest proof of the velocity at which the earth is hurling through space, … just when you are convinced that the world is experiencing some brobdingnagian episode of sleep apnea, the giant cottonwood tree by the road on the north quarter reaches out and grabs a breath of fresh air and jingles its leaves, if for no other reason than to make you think that there’s a breeze.

Bertha and R. Esther, with lifetimes of acquired wisdom and powers of observation, certainly recognized an almost duplication of their formative years in the childhoods of my sisters and me. They looked at us and saw the same path of potential laid before them. We looked at them with their peace of mind and spirit at the end of a path of a lifetime of service and saw the salt of the earth.

With her sister greeting her Lord a few years before, R. Esther knew true peace in 1986. A few months after her passing, my sisters and I received letters informing each of us that we were to receive an inheritance from R. Esther’s estate. She had honored different times, places and people of significance of her and Bertha’s lives through her will, not the least of which was a nod to the place where she and her sister grew up. I don’t recall how D. and K. celebrated the memory of these two grand ladies with their inheritance. I bought a stereo.

It was tall, black and gleaming and it came from Sears. There were so many lights on the face of it you felt like you were looking at San Francisco at night. I had no albums to speak of to play on my new stereo so I went to my professors at SDSU and asked if they had some to borrow.

“How much Oscar Peterson have you listened to?” Dr. H. asked me. Who? Dr. H.’s smile told me that I’d just handed him a token of honor. “Erik, I get to introduce you to one of the greatest jazz pianists ever! Take this home, listen to it 38 times and, when you can walk again, come back for more.”

When I listened to “The Good Life”, the reaction that Dr. H. predicted was like a disease that I had to allow to work through my system. After one track, there was really no purpose or need for me to approach the piano again. I had never heard piano playing like this before. It was a carnival. He didn’t have two things happening at once; he had twenty-two things happening at once. And you could hear all of them with crystal clear articulation and well-thought-out ideas … THAT HE WAS IMPROVISING ON THE SPOT!!! And he was full of fun. One of his stunts was to send the other members of his trio or quartet out first and then, on his way to the piano while the bass player was looking elsewhere, he would turn one of his tuning pegs, making him have to tune the string while keeping up with Oscar. I can’t wait to share more of Mr. Peterson with you!

My younger sister acquired the San Francisco stereo after I began working on cruise ships and had turned to a pursuit of CD's without looking back.

Our family would visit Bertha and R. Esther frequently at their apartment in Brookings, and we kids were entranced by what we perceived to be a cosmopolitan way of living. There was a folding rocking chair and a blue round-backed chair with what looked like needlepoint work on the cushions. There were prints of scenes in far-off cities in far-off lands on the walls. There was a table in the hallway with a telephone on it and a telephone on the stand next to the bed in the bedroom. There were photo albums of pictures from exotic trips. Lots of knitting, lots of crocheting, an unfinished letter started on the desk, a large wooden encased stereo ...

And always by the TV, the local listings with PBS’s “Live at the Met” circled in red pen. I think she would have approved of my stereo.

Credits: To Dr. H., the great ambassador of jazz. Thank you for your decades of excellent music-making and your commitment to students of music. To Esther S., Oletha M. and Eric M., who also lived childhoods very much like ours on the same farm in the same house. Our family honors you for esteeming the lives of your aunts.