My Valley
Music
Always anything that sounded like a tune became music to my ears
and the first distant notes of brass band or hurdy-gurdy set me all agog. 'Most every
spring the mendicant Italians would make their appearance, with hand organs, and a monkey
to collect pennies, and the joy of the youngsters knew no bounds. Once two colored men, a
very rare sight in those parts, came through the village, one playing a fiddle and the
other dancing to its music.
On the Fourth of July, or some political gathering, the Waverly Band of Monticello was drawn into the Valley in a long side-seated wagon, with the big bass drum extending from the back and the drummer beating time for dear life to the tempo of other instruments. The music of the "Star Spangled Banner" and "Red White and Blue" would fill the air. Once this Band came to take part in a Grange picnic up the Gail Road in the Tillotson Woods. A large platform had been erected, and when speaking and eating were over, the Band played for square dancing. This was a very special occasion in my Valley life.
Music of quite a different character was supplied by the Callbreath family, who lived at White Lake where they had a boarding house for "summer people" from New York. The "Callbreath Band", really an orchestra, composed of two violins, a bass viol, a cornet, a pair of kettle drums and a triangle, was played by "Old Jim", "Young Jim", Tom, Joe and Mamie, the only girl in the family. Often they played at dances, but always at the Good Templars' twice-a-year theatricals, where Kate Stanton and Don Paris were the stars, with the Callbreaths discoursing sweet music between the acts. The price of this full evening's entertainment was twenty-five cents. The "Band" was broken up when "Old Jim", big and six feet tall, went to Alaska to mine gold. Years later he returned, minus the gold, but wearing a long coat of undyed seal, a beautiful cream color almost reaching to his heels.
As to our own contribution toward the musical life of the Valley , of course all of us girls took music lessons. A music teacher, Miss Mary Thornton, came from Monticello once a week. The Swan girls had a teacher from New York who spent the summers with them. Since in our earlier years we went to school but a half day, we had afternoons to practice and so became quite proficient. Some had pianos, some parlor organs, and one, Gertie Purdy, had a melodeon that looked like a small piano but sounded like an organ. We were always glad for a chance to show off, and when the Presbyterian Sunday School needed new library books, we set about to help earn money for them by giving an entertainment in Eureka Hall. Mrs. Mac Kiersted and her sister, Ida Quick, both good musicians, took the lead, and Madam C-, a guest at the White Lake Mansion House, agreed to sing. I think she was an opera singer so we were greatly elated by her presence. We spoke our pieces, played our piano solos and then counted the money; we had over sixty dollars to spend on books- a really big sum in those days.
In the Purdy parlor we learned to dance on Mrs. Purdy's handsome ten-wire Brussels carpet, which had a design of large pink and red roses all over it. First the Two-step Schottische, then the Polka and the Waltz. If there were enough present, we made up a square set-the old quadrille. We had other pleasures as well with the old melodeon when Alida, young Mrs. Willis Purdy, played for us to sing, mostly the Moody and Sankey hymns. These two evangelists were holding great revival meetings in New York and their hymns were penetrating to all sections of the country. "What a Friend We Have in Jesus", "The Ninety and Nine", "Gates Ajar" and many others appealed to our youthful imaginations and love of music. I can still hear and see us grouped around Alida as she sat and played for us. Later on, in the days at the Red School House, we put to good use the dancing steps we had learned, for the noon hour often saw us running down to the old carding mill by the Lybolt Brook. Intact was all the ancient machinery, that was so important when each farmhouse spinning wheel and loom fashioned homemade cloth. The floor of the mill, good and slippery from the oil of sheep's wool, was wonderful for dancing. There with boys our own age we balanced corners and swung partners: the tunes were whistled by one or another of us who, perched on the top of a hogshead, would drum heels against its sides to emphasize the rhythm.
A carding mill I should explain was a building housing machinery run by water power, where farmers sent their wool fleeces dipped from sheep to be cleaned, sorted and made into "cards" for spinning on the old wool wheels which the old time farm homes were hardly able to do without, as much of the cloth for family wear in earlier years was made at home. My Grandmother in her farm home had a special room in one of the outbuildings called the Weaveshop where stood her loom on which she wove cloth for men's suits or blankets. Itinerant tailors, usually women, made the rounds of families nearby to manufacture this homemade cloth into garments. A great deal of this sewing was done by hand, but in Aunt Julia's early days of teaching she had bought out of her slender salary, called by her "school money", one of the first Elias Howe sewing machines and from then on she never lacked for occupation at home outside her school work. Even with a large ungraded school of 80-odd pupils in her home district she found time to make all her Father's clothing, for he would have none of the so-called store pants in vogue at that time made with the fly front."'No Sir", nothing like that for Grandfather! He insisted on the old fashioned "apron front" trousers. Coats and vests were also of an ancient vintage, to say nothing of the high pointed shirt collar with a three-cornered silk cravat folded flat and wrapped around the neck two or three times, ending in a small knot in front. The old sewing machine I recall very well was of simple construction but made enough noise for a threshing machine.
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