Ukulele on my mind

While Hawaii is often thought of as the place that invented the ukulele, it actually has Portuguese roots. In 1879, a seafaring immigrant, Joao Fernandez, jumped ship in Hawaii along with his uke, then called a machete de braga. He strummed all over the place and is credited with starting the Elvis-like frenzy that continues to this day.  Right here in Ojai.

I spend Monday mornings in the ukulele club. Meeting at the Ojai Library, the group attracts a dozen uke players. We arrive before opening and line up in the library courtyard waiting for Sam to open the door in concert with the 10am ringing of the bells in the post office tower.

We each carry one or more instruments, a music stand that regularly collapses during my strumming, and a three-ring binder filled with dozens of songs, some well beyond my limited capabilities.

The library staff is very helpful, and we usually find that Sam has arranged the Walmart $5 green plastic chairs in a circle next to the ancient fireplace. I’m usually early and have, like the others, laid claim to my “regular” seat. Newcomers arrive periodically and must find or manufacture a position in the circle. A new player offended me greatly last Monday by selecting my coveted seat; it took me fifteen minutes to get my thoughts back in order.

New songs are regularly introduced by the players and photocopied on the library’s new copy machine. I rarely take on that responsibility since it requires asking for the copier key, inserting it in the proper hole, placing the document face up on the machine and entering the desired number of copies. My aging memory and inability to retain and perform those instructions often cause me to decline the task by averting my eyes from the copy requester. Wearing hearing aids often prompts the requester to simply ignore me altogether.  I try to atone for this sin of omission by returning lots of chairs to the storeroom at the end of the session.

I’ve been playing for nine months. I can play maybe ten basic chords and regularly screw up others. I am often unable to remember the fingering difference between E, E minor, and E7.  F, F# and F#-minor is another example of my ignorance that leads me to often consult the list of chords tucked away in my ballooning binder.

My 83-year-old fingers are woefully short (I blame that condition on my parents.) Neither are they as flexible as they once were when I could tie a fly to a trout line. I simply skip any chords that require four fingers or a span defying stretch of more than three frets. Or I cheat and only use three fingers, hoping the result will be masked by the other players who can do it correctly.

Adding to the challenge, the sheet music comes from different sources. The chord names and lyrics are often Lilliputian size and defy my bifocals as I struggle to read them. I look like that perpetual motion drinking bird that tilts forward and backyard looking for the sweet spot.

My college friend Harry in Livermore has taken up playing classical guitar. He’s done it before but put it aside for more important things including wood working, yanking on a rowing machine, and salmon fishing. Salmon season has just ended, so he can now doggedly pursue the classical guitar with gusto.

We compare notes every Monday evening. He’s anal about calling at 7:30 when I’m immersed in the latest Netflix offering, or asleep on the couch after a hard day in the ukulele pits. We both are intelligent; he has a PhD and I do crossword puzzles. Combining our abilities, we have determined that improving our skills on our chosen instruments is largely dependent on the time devoted to practice. I guess I already knew that when I gave up the trumpet in high school having failed to emulate Harry James after six weeks of intensive training.

I spend two hours with the ukulele group each week. I arrive home invigorated, promising that I will practice every other day for an hour. I remove my uke from its zippered case and place it on the table next to my music stand. And there it too often remains until the next Monday when I put it back in the case and take it to the library for another two-hour session. I’m sure that time is moving much faster than it used to, giving me less opportunity to practice…the thought makes me feel a bit better.

Members of the group have different skill levels. Many seem to have little trouble fingering an F#-minor. Others are less skillful, like me, and sweat profusely at the thought of a Bb-7. On the other hand, I’m good at tuning the uke and am often asked for help by those less fortunate. I’m also the oldest person in the group and am pleased to hum a melody or sing the lyrics to songs that were written prior to the advent of the Gutenberg printing press.

Two or three players take this whole thing to another level and seem to speak in tongues. Barre, alternative-strumming, bending, flee-and-fluke, inversion, and my favorite…hammer-on often fill the air while my eyes glaze over. Discussion of the instrument itself is unreal as terms like purfling, nut-slots and kerfling are spoken while experiencing high ecstasy. I learned that a ukulele maker is called a luthier, opening my eyes to what was previously hidden from me.

But maybe I’m just jealous. They are marvelous players who deserve to be heard. Playing simple background notes while they flee-and-fluke is enough for me. I enjoy a simple strum while singing the lyrics, occasionally with gusto. I hear myself and am happy with the sounds I make. I even enjoy replacing the Walmart green chairs since it puts me at the same level as that of the skilled players.

On those days when I rouse myself to practice, I am the master of my fate. I can’t always remember the melody, so I rely on my iPhone and Spotify to substitute for my library friends. I’m more casual about the instrumental solos and can stop anywhere I please to repeat the verse. I often sing loudly and will repeat the whole song if I really like it, maybe more than twice. The time flies and I am often surprised when the hour passes. Only the pain in my fingertips or the ache in my hands remind me of my limitations.

I take pleasure in noting that songs once impossible are now achievable. I feel more at ease in the group but also feel stagnant in mastering some of the tougher pieces. It’s at those times that I think of Harry and the magic that practice can bring. And then I hesitate and think, maybe I’ll never learn the difference between purfling and kerfling, but I will always remember what a luthier is.

How old am I?

I was told I had a baby face. One that made me look younger than my chronological age. Never thought about it much until I spent my last two years of college at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I was 19.

In addition to taking classes, eating inedible dorm food, and ogling the coeds, I also embarked on a career in beer drinking. Having come from a Jewish family where drinking was a novelty, I knew little of the finer points of becoming an alcoholic. My father was the only drinker, occasionally downing a shot of Canadian Club with his dinner and emitting a highly audible “aaaaahhh” that signaled the start of the meal for the rest of us.

I worked diligently and earned a minor in drinking along with a bachelor’s major in business. I was ably assisted in achieving that distinction by Prehn’s beer pub on Green Street, run by Paul Prehn, a former wrestling coach at the university. Paul later became a state athletic commissioner who selected the referee for the famous Dempsey-Tunney fight at Chicago’s Soldier Field, which now houses the Bears football team that occasionally looks like I did after downing several beers at Prehn’s.

I could have earned a double major rather than the beer minor if I had chosen to drink during the week instead of just on Saturday nights when Prehn’s was always filled with drunks and about-to-be drunks. The inside of Prehn’s looked much like the wooden tables and booths featured in the Godfather movie; the one where Al Pacino guns down the crooked police captain played by Sterling Hayden, and the mafia guy Sollozzo, played by the perfectly cast Al Lettieri.

Like Sollozzo, all the cast members in the Godfather looked like they belonged there, except maybe Pacino. His baby face belied his true destiny. Like him, my face made me look younger than 19 and prompted an ID check from Prehn’s waiters. I was irritated at being singled out for this treatment since everyone else in the bar on Saturday night was a student just like me. Mercifully, the irritation subsided as the bartenders got used to seeing my face. Or maybe my baby face aged with each sinful beer, just like the one in Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray.

I finished my schooling in 1960 and, without my gluttony to fill their cash box, Prehn’s shut down six years later. But I had learned much at this smelly, smokey classroom that served me well in the years ahead. Like always keeping an ID readily available.

My baby face continued to be a subject of interest wherever alcohol was served. I became an American classic joke as my friends laughed while I was researched and probed by waiters, waitresses, barmen and baristas.

And then, around 50, it came to a crashing halt while driving on Highway 5 to San Diego. I stopped for something to eat at the always freeway close Denny’s, where one can be assured of consistency if not quality. I had completed my meal and made my way to the checkout where I fumbled with my wallet seeking my credit card. The cashier, whose name tag revealed her to be Brenda, looked at me and said, “That’ll be $23 less the ten percent senior discount.”

Since we were three weeks away from Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I only hesitated a moment thinking about whether I should tell Brenda of her ageing mistake, or risk serious moral turpitude by keeping it a secret. Two bucks is two bucks.

Since in those days I was mildly certain there really was an all-seeing god, I chose honesty and said, “Brenda, I’m only 50 and don’t qualify for the discount.”

Without hesitation and thinking I’d be pleased, Brenda smiled, “That’s OK. You look older, so I’ll give you the discount anyway.”

I wanted to tell her what she could do with her discount and the overcooked sausage on my Denny’s Special breakfast plate.

Years went by and I figured that I was over this looking older thing until a month ago, a couple of lunar cycles into my 83^rd birthday.

I hate shopping for shoes. After trying on two pairs, I’m mentally exhausted and willing to do anything to get out of the store, so I buy one. I pay the penalty the next day at home by either feeling like I was wearing too-tight shoes created for the Iron Maiden in medieval torture chambers, or that were so large that Jackie and I could fit all four of our feet into the oversized gondolas called shoes.

So it was with my usual trepidation that I entered the Adidas store in the Camarillo Outlet Mall. Jackie’s face and demeanor spoke of great expectations, while I looked like I was in the middle of the Bataan Death March looking for water. 

It was Saturday and the mall had thousands of people looking for things they didn’t need. The Adidas store had a similar, though more focused, contingent. I entered the store dragging one foot in silent protest. Sensing a kill, Jackie grabbed onto an idling salesman named Jeffrey, and said with some confidence, “He needs shoes.”

Jeffrey looked at me, turned back to Jackie and said, “What kind of shoes does he wear?”

“Athletic shoes that don’t hurt.”

Jeffrey, thinking that more info might be useful, focused on Jackie again, “What size does he wear?”

I began to feel unnecessary and possessed of limited intelligence.  I might as well have just sent my feet to the store, while the rest of me stayed in the nursing home sipping watered down orange juice through a paper straw.

Maybe it was my demeanor. Maybe it was my sour expression. Or my hunched shoulders, over the hill sneakers, gray hair, and total disinterest. Or maybe he knew my eyesight was failing because of my bifocals and squinty eyes. The hearing aids probably firmed up Jeffrey’s evaluation. One that says this guy probably doesn’t even know he’s in a shoe store. Better focus on his daughter.

I eventually unscrewed Jeffrey’s head by quoting from Einstein’s theory of relativity, straightening my torso, and doing a dance like the one Ray Bolger did as the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

To further demonstrate my substantial capabilities, I tried on three, not just two, pairs of shoes, and tied each of them properly. I rejected them all, blessed Jeffery with the language of the 23^rd Psalm, and left the store. Jackie offered to repeat the process in any number of shoe stores in the mall.

Instead, we bought her a pair of shoes and went home.