My father had grown up surrounded by music, and if there ever was a music addict, he certainly was one. My father must have thought about that a lot, because it was several days later before he mentioned it.
Maybe you should get him a fiddle or an accordion." I wasn't in the room, but I overheard the conversation. I've never seen a kid so interested in music as your little boy. He watched us like a hawk all night long and never took his eyes off of our fingers while we were playing. He said, "Joel, I've been noticing how your little boy seems to love accordion music. I along with an uncle of Wade's by the name of Theoval Frugé, a found it strange that he would come over again the morning after the party and wondered what it was he wanted with my father. The next morning Hiram came over again for a visit to talk to my father. I kept hearing those beautiful old tunes in my mind over and over again. I couldn't imagine where the time had gone and I sure wasn't sleepy however, I went to bed, though it was impossible to sleep. He replied that after 5 hours of music and dancing the people were getting tired and it was time to go home and go to bed. I asked my father why the party was breaking up. It seemed as though the party had just started when people began leaving. There was going to be the same trio providing the music, along with an uncle of Wade Fruge’s by the name of Theoval Fruge. Finally the day arrived and we got ready for music party #2 in the outdoor kitchen. I don't think I ever spent a longer period of time than I did waiting from Christmas to Mardi Gras. He said that would be too soon, but maybe in the spring for Mardi Gras. I was hooked for life, hooked to the point that I asked my father if he thought it would be possible to maybe have a New Years Eve party also. All the other kids were outside shooting fireworks, but fireworks were going off in my heart and my head just being in the presence of those three simple, wonderful old guys. I was positive that that was as good as it gets. Wow! I sat next to them the entire night and didn't take my eyes off them. That night was sheer heaven for me, Wade Frugé and Maxime Rozas on fiddles playing with Hiram. I was at last going to see Hiram play his accordion. He invited a bunch of friends, one of them being Hiram Courville, to play music for dancing. Christmas time came along and my father decided to have a Christmas Eve party with music in the outdoor kitchen. He wanted a place where he and his farmer neighbors could get together once in a while to cook supper, visit and have a few beers. The following year my father decided to dismantle the house and reassemble it into a building behind our house. Since it was built from cypress wood, it was still structurally sound. The house that he lived in was pretty well run down and needed a lot of repair.
One day Hiram came over to tell my father that he was quitting farming and moving to Eunice to work as a carpenter's helper. Times were changing and tenant farmers were slowly being squeezed out of business by the larger farms that were developing. I had heard my grandfather play fiddle along with Dennis McGee, also a tenant farmer of my grandfather, but I was more attracted to the sounds that would drift from that catalpa grove to our house. I had heard the music from across the fields and was so interested to see what sort of contraption made those beautiful sounds. So one day I asked him if he would please bring his "accordion" the next time he came for a visit. He would visit my father very often to talk about the crops, but he never brought his accordion. Hiram Courville was a little skinny man with unusually large hands and long fingers. He replied that it was a man by the name of Hiram Courville playing a squeezebox. I asked my dad what was making that music. Very often I would hear wonderful music coming from the direction of his home. In the mid-40s, one of my grandfather’s tenants lived in a catalpa grove across the fields from the farm where I grew up.
0 kommentar(er)
