Murray Edwards

     Trenton dam, Trenton, NE, circa 1971.  A Friday or Saturday afternoon, probably September.  Most of those gathered in the sand in the shade of the cottonwoods were teachers.  There was an exception.

    Maude and Murray Edwards were there, invited by the social studies teacher.  The social studies teacher came to us from California where he had worked at LA International while finishing his degree in social studies and getting his teaching credentials.  He took his position as history teacher in December after his predecessor had been forced to resign in a student-teacher romance scandal.  (The predecessor, when confronted with the evidence of his inappropriate behavior, replied that he loved all of his students.)

     Gerry, the California transplant, was a bit different, too.  He resembled a Las Vegas gambler with flashy clothes and an open hand, especially when it came to buying rounds of drinks, with money he could ill afford to spend, as we learned later.  As he revealed his background working at LA International, the question always arose, why would he give up that well paid job to take up teaching, especially in Kansas?  His reply drew guffaws from his new colleagues:  “I wanted a job where I would be respected.”

     Gerry was outgoing and ignorant of small town social mores, so he could and would talk to anyone from bank president to pariah sex offender-child abuser.  He would take his “planning period” when he was supposed to be preparing lesson plans, grading, working individually with students and such like to go down town to the local coffee shop and schmooze with the locals.  When the school secretary told him he shouldn’t be leaving school except for school business or an occasional personal errand, he told her it wasn’t his wont to take orders from a secretary.  So much for respect.

      Gerry was a bit of a musician, owning a small piano that was two octaves short of a full 88, upon which he could hammer out a few tunes.  (I had a lot of trouble getting anything meaningful out of that piano.  I kept falling off either ends of the earth on that keyboard.)  He also had an old guitar and would belt out his favorite song, “Aw Hell, Play Anything.”  Somewhere, he had run into Maude and Murray and had had a jam session with them.  He had unknowingly defied the unwritten social rules and invited them to the beach party with the teachers.  They were not teachers (though Maude had been a teacher in her youth) and they were several years older than most of us, being grandparents many times over when most of us had either no children or very young ones.

      Gerry broke out his old guitar and prevailed upon Murray to get out his fiddle, which he was reluctant to do, being that close to the water.  But he did.  Whereupon Gerry broke another rule:  he suggested I play Murray’s guitar, also safely stowed inside Murray’s car.

     There I was, a young, probably irresponsible kid, lounging in a cheap lawn chair in the sand, drinking a beer.  Would you want to place your guitar in such hands?   Murray had Maude hold his violin while he returned to the car, dug out and tuned the guitar, and telling me to be careful, reluctantly placed the old guitar in my hands.  So we played.

      That was my introduction to old time fiddling.  I had of course accompanied Dad on his fiddle at various Lions functions when, as entertainment chairman, he couldn’t line up any other entertainment, he filled the gap himself.  But Murray’s fiddling was different.  I was unfamiliar with most of the tunes, but many of them were three-changers, so I got along.  Murray was unimpressed.  He suggested I should be playing A and D chords on the first three frets like normal people instead of up the neck four or five frets where I was much more comfortable.

     The sun dropped out of sight, the evening cooled off and grew dank. Murray announced the humidity was making it impossible to keep his fiddle tuned and he feared the effect the moisture would have on his instruments.  He cased the fiddle and the guitar, said his goodbyes and departed the scene.  I would have no further interaction with Maude or Murray for nearly a decade.

      In 1980, I gave up teaching.  I foresaw that I would be required to teach junior high school, a position I didn’t want, and I was uncomfortable with someone else raising my daughter.  So I quit and became a house husband.  As such, I had some leisure time.

      A neighbor’s daughter fancied herself a guitar player.  She knew four chords, C, F, G, and D.  Sometimes she could fetch an E.  She loved Murray and loved playing guitar to his fiddling.  Many fiddle tunes are played in E, and Caty couldn’t get B7.  Thus she applied to me to teach her a few things.

     I was quite uncomfortable with having her come to my house during the day, as she was quite an attractive woman with two young boys and a little bit of a reputation.  Gerry may have been ignorant of small-town ways, but I certainly was not.  I knew the gossip that would be generated if Cathy called on me more than once or twice.  The lurid imagination of my octogenarian neighbors would assume the beautiful music was from the bedroom.

     The solution to the problem arrived in a timely and natural manner.  Cathy suggested she might make more progress in guitar playing if we involved Maude and Murray.  She arranged it all.  Tisha and I would pack up and meet Cathy at Maude and Murray’s, or sometimes they would pack their instruments to our house.  Cathy lived 12 miles out in the country.  I don’t think we ever went out there.

     I had to borrow an acoustic guitar, but I did use the old Gretsch some.  One of the things I did for Cathy was mount two or three electric pickups onto her guitar and try to get them to work.  In the process, I connected with Gary, former band teacher at the high school, who also had given up teaching and went to work for a music store in Norton.  He provided the pickups on a trial basis until we found the right one.  Then Cathy could plug into the amplifier and make as much noise as I could.

     I can’t remember what acoustic guitar I borrowed, but Gary provided me a new one from the music store for a good while, with the provision that I would show it to folks and make sure everyone knew it was for sale.  I did, but I had the usual success I have whenever I try to sell something.  My conscience got the best of me.  On a single income, I had no hope of buying that guitar.  Back to Gary it went. 

     I don’t remember the particulars, but somehow folks became aware we had formed a group and we began making public appearances.  Ruth, the local historian, solicited our help in staging a program on Revolutionary War songs.  She wrote and read the narrative and we supplied the music. 

      We were able to do a few “Yankee Doodle” type numbers that Murray knew and could play.  We had to learn a few songs that none of us had ever heard before.  The one I remember was “In Good Old Colony Times”.  Ruth had music, but I was the only one that could read, so I became the default piano player.  Cathy was the vocalist and guitar player.  The program was a great success when we performed it for the local music club. We were invited to repeat it for the grade school. Playing for the music club AND the grade school:  We had arrived.  (To be continued)