Legend of the Music Man


LEGEND OF THE MUSIC MAN
As the taxi turned onto Bank Street in the old neighborhood, a rush of nostalgia overcame me and I moved back forty years in time. These were my streets; the old brownstones looked just like they had in my childhood. The ethnicity of the neighborhood had changed at least twice since we lived in that second floor walk-up apartment. However, it was still a neighborhood for poor working families on the first rung of the success ladder. Dominic's market was in the same place but with a different name. Now it sold Asian food. The hydrant was in the same place. We called it third base. Our front stoop had seven steps. When you were in a hurry, you could jump down onto the sidewalk from the third step and not hurt yourself. Looking out the cab window, I saw that finding a parking space on that block would be an eternal problem. As we crawled along as slow as the city traffic allowed, I thought about the Music Man. He had a space on the next corner where he played a violin every day. There was a cup on the ground that people would throw change into. We walked past him on the way home from school. Most of us walked on the other side of the street, we thought violin music was sissy stuff.
	I remember the first day I stopped in front of the Music Man. I liked the sound, but I was afraid to tell my friends. They would tease me if they knew. I was nine years old in Mrs. Randall's fourth grade class. For some reason I walked home alone. I walked up to the Music Man, stopped, and listened to his playing. I never had any extra money. But that day I had a nickel in my pocket and I put it in the cup. You were supposed to do that if you stopped and listened.
The Music Man smiled and nodded. He was playing something slow and dull, but the sound was enchanting to me. Then all of a sudden, he changed the tune and he was playing a song that sounded like a parade march, then in a few seconds, the sound changed again to something my parents called hillbilly music. Finally, he started playing some rock and roll music, tunes I knew from the radio and Johnny's 45-rpm record player. "Wow," I said aloud not even realizing I was speaking, "you can play all of those kinds of music with a violin? "Yes, and a lot more," he said. And many more styles of music filled my ears. I stood there for a while; the Music Man just kept playing. Finally I had to get home for supper and I started to leave. He stopped playing, leaned over, and handed me back my nickel. "Kids get in free," he grinned, "Come back again, he whispered as he started to play again. And, I did go back again, again, again, and again. Once my friends stopped teasing me, they would sometimes stop and listen, but I was there everyday after school. We got talking after a while. I told him he was good. I guess I really did not know if he was or not, but the music sounded good to me. Even at nine years old, every kid in New York City had heard of Carnegie Hall. That is where all the famous people play music. One day trying to sound important, I said to the Music Man, "You should play in Carnegie Hall."
He turned, smiled, and said two words, I will never forget, "I did!" Like any kid, I was full of questions. When? Why? With who? He just waved my questions aside and said, "Let that be our little secret." I started to protest, but he never again spoke about Carnegie Hall. I kept his secret. Maybe he was afraid of people teasing him.
One day the Music Man let me play a couple of notes on his violin. I was terrified as he handed me the bow. I sounded horrible. But, he kept encouraging me to play and after a few weeks, I could make a note or two that didn't sound like fingers running down a chalkboard. In the eighth grade, I went to a different school and walked home from the other end of the block. I would visit the Music Man maybe once a week, but now there were girls, homework, TV, and other things that took up my time. I still played a violin a little at school. Two days before Christmas that year I walked up the block to wish the Music Man a Merry Christmas. I never knew his name, we just called him the Music Man. He liked that. He was gone. Maybe he was taking a Christmas break. When I walked into our apartment, my mother said a package came for me with a note that said, "Do not Open 'til Xmas." I wondered who it was from. All the relatives and friends we exchanged gifts with lived within a couple of blocks and we always walked around on Christmas Day with our gifts. This was the first time I ever got a package delivered just to me. On Christmas morning, I made a beeline to that package. My curiosity was going crazy. When I opened the package, I stopped moving. There was the Music Man's bow and violin. What happened? I asked. What happened to the Music Man? My parents didn't know. They had heard me talk often about the Music Man and had even walked to the end of the block with me a couple of times to hear his music. And, they left a dime in the cup. There was a note in the package. It read. "Merry Xmas from the Music Man. Keep practicing." And that was all. We never saw the Music Man after that. To this day, forty years later, I still don't know his name. I did keep practicing. Music became a passion and a profession, although I was never as good as the Music Man and never played Carnegie Hall. But, my career allowed me the opportunity to search the old records of musicians that had played there. I figured it had to be sometime in the 1930's that the Music Man might have been played at the Hall. There has never been a doubt in my mind that he was telling the absolute truth when he said. "I did." There were scores of people that had played violin at Carnegie Music Hall in the 1930's, way too many to research. The Music Man's name remains a mystery. I will never know how the Music Man went from playing on stage in one of the world's premier music settings to playing on a corner of Bank Street. What I do know is that the Music Man and his beautiful music set the stage for my life. As we passed the old apartment, I realized I was more interested in seeing the Music Man's corner than I was in seeing our front stoop, third base, or the other familiar sights. Then we were there at the Music Man's corner. The sounds of the traffic faded. My head filled, not with silence, but with the memories of the joyous sounds of that violin playing hillbilly, classical, jazz, rock and roll, and other tunes. I shut my eyes, listened to the music in my head and saw the smile of a kind, generous man. Who was the Music Man?
Copyright 2006, Pete Smith More information about The Music Man Legend