18. The Piano and the Pictures ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Earlier that year, Robert and Charles had begun taking piano lessons from Miss Ella Beegle, who had a studio at the top of a building that housed Allen’s Dance Studio across from the Journal & Courier newspaper headquarters in Lafayette. Older than Joe and Ida, Miss Beegle was a kind, gracious woman who could hardly bring herself to correct a pupil. She was well-dressed and well-spoken. After awaiting his turn in a room filled with wicker furniture, Robert would hear Miss Beegle saying goodbye to Charles as the two of them walked down a short hallway. Then it would be Robert’s turn to follow Miss Beegle into her studio.

Robert enjoyed the lessons, although he seldom practiced enough. By this time in his first-grade year, he could begin to read simple scores in the beginner’s book. One of the short pieces had an illustration of kittens that Robert liked because he had found kittens in his father’s barn on more than one occasion. Each week, Miss Beegle asked Robert to write another scale in his booklet of music paper. Robert tried his best to form each note perfectly. “Your scales are better than print,” Miss Beegle often said, complimenting Robert’s handiwork. Of course, his notes were not better than print, but it was Miss Beegle’s method to be unsparing in her praise of a pupil’s accomplishments.

Miss Beegle’s studio boasted a grand piano. At home, Robert and Charles practiced on an old upright piano that was taller than many similar instruments. To Robert, it seemed harder to play than Miss Beegle’s grand. The keys of the old upright offered a little more resistance.

Ida was proud of her sons’ progress on the piano, and she insisted that they practice—although both slipped off the piano bench all too soon every day. Whenever Ida and Joe entertained guests, the boys had to play one song each on the piano. While the poor playing in general and the wrong notes in particular must have made it difficult to listen, everyone always applauded rapturously afterward.

Robert spent his time at the piano learning to read music, rather than playing “by ear,” as the saying went. He never developed the capacity to reproduce at the keyboard any song that he heard. He had a penchant for exactness, and playing a musical score required the satisfying precision that Robert felt would be lacking, were he to indulge in playing by ear. Many years later, he would wish that he could automatically play any song that he could hear.

For Robert, music lay at the heart of drawing. Ever since he could remember, his mother had provided a seemingly endless supply of crayons, pastels, and watercolor paints. Ida bought numerous large packs of oversized paper and encouraged the boys to make as many pictures as they could. When Robert was three, he sketched Grandma Rhode, and it actually looked like her! He felt that, if he could “hear” the inner music of a surface accurately, he could reproduce that surface in a two-dimensional drawing. No actual sounds were emitted from such surfaces; Robert had to imagine the sounds each surface would make. If he wanted to draw someone’s nose, he peered intently at the way the skin stretched across the bridge and imagined what sounds would best express the skin as it came over the bridge and swept toward the cheek—as a stream or a breeze might do. When he heard the sounds as clearly as possible, he put his pencil or his crayon or his paintbrush on the paper and made his hand move in harmony with the sounds he was hearing. Essentially, he was transferring the sounds to the paper, which, in turn, changed three dimensions into two.

So music and visual art were really the same! Visual art was music seen in shading and lines.

Robert had a small chalkboard that had been part of an easel but was now separate from it. He spent many hours drawing with white chalk on the dark green chalkboard.

He sat in a large armchair upholstered in a fuzzy fabric that was nearly knobby and bristly. With the chalkboard across his knees and steadied by his left hand, he drew sequential pictures to accompany stories that he invented and told himself. As soon as one was finished (sometimes even before it was finished), he erased it with a handful of dusty tissues and continued on to the next. The drawings were like the major pictures in an animation storyboard. Quite often, he took his inspiration from the TV westerns and from Disney movies. He drew stagecoaches in the desert with mountains in the background, log cabins, forts, and Indians. He never missed an opportunity to sketch Indians and frequently made portraits of them with their feathered headdresses.

Making countless chalk drawings meant that a thick ridge of white dust developed across his jeans. Where he set down his tissues, a broad pile of dust formed on the fabric of the armchair. Mysteriously, his mother never complained about the chalk dust permeating the chair. She periodically brushed and vacuumed the dust away. Robert gained the impression that visual art was approved, no matter how messy it might be.

On many joyous occasions, Ida sat down with Robert and his chalkboard on a davenport in the living room. She invited him to tell a story aloud while he illustrated it, and he complied.

“Your story needs an ending,” she always said. “You’re reaching a place where you stop, but that’s not an ending.”

“What should it be?” Robert always asked.

“You can end a story in many ways,” his mother would answer. “You can surprise whoever is listening to your story.”

“What would a surprise be?”

On one such occasion, Ida replied, “You could have the tribe make the boy in your story an honorary member because he rescued their pony from the deep hole that his father had dug.”

Robert quickly drew a picture of smiling Indians standing around the boy and the pony.

“That’s right,” Ida said. “Another way would be to make a point. You could tell why it’s important to keep fences around deep holes so that ponies don’t fall into them.”

Robert hurriedly rubbed away the existing sketch, set the handful of tissues to one side, and drew a hole with a fence around it. For good measure, he added several trees in the background.

“That’s good!” his mother said. “You could also return to what you said in the beginning and make it mean more at the end. Do you remember when you said that the boy wished he could do something for his Indian friends?”

“I see,” said Robert. “‘So the boy got his wish,’” he proclaimed in a louder voice, to show that the sentence was his ending. At the same time, he drew a close-up of the boy’s face with a big grin next to several faces of Indians, also with big grins.

“That’s very good!” his mother said. “Whenever you begin a story, think what your ending is going to be. Make everything in the story count toward the ending.”

Robert smiled with satisfaction. “I will!” he agreed, but, by the next time his mother sat with him and invited him to tell a story with his chalkboard, he had forgotten about endings. Patiently, Ida would guide him through various ways to end whatever story he had been telling her.

Eventually, there came a day when he remembered.

“And the puppy that nobody had wanted had grown up to be the prettiest dog of all!” he said, as he put the finishing touches to his sketch of a dog. He could hear the music of its pointy ears, its soft nose, and its twinkling eyes.

Ida smiled and said, “Now you know how to end a story!”

3. The Stage ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Just then, Robert heard his father whistling as he opened the screen door to the east porch. Robert ran to help Joe put the round white filter in the special galvanized funnel that perfectly fit the opening in the top of the tall milk can. “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go,” Joe whistled, while he lifted the white enameled milk bucket with its red rim and poured the morning’s fragrant milk into the funnel. Robert heard the merry pinging of the filtered liquid dripping and splashing within the can.

Rubbing his sleepy eyes, Charles stood in the kitchen doorway and yawned.

“Let’s sit down to breakfast,” Ida said.

Tumblers of fresh milk with a layer of yellow cream having risen to the top were arranged around the table. Halves of pink grapefruits rested in bowls at each place around the table. Mounds of sugar on top of the grapefruits were slowly turning a pale gray as the juice mingled with the granules. While Joe, Robert, and Charles spooned out the pink segments, Ida fried eggs until the edges of the whites were crispy brown. As the toaster popped with a pleasant “ker-ching” sound, she quickly slathered homemade butter on the slices and distributed the hot toast to each person.

“Joe, I’m worried about the cows,” Ida said. “If they get out, they’ll fall in that hole.”

A deep hole ….

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Joe. “They’re not going to get out. If they were going to break through the pasture fence, it wouldn’t be there. It’d be where that old panel is by the hog lot.”

By this time, Robert was walking well wherever and whenever he wanted. He was talking much more often and fluently. He had practically forgotten the fact that, only two years earlier, his parents had to carry him everywhere while his feet ached. He had indeed forgotten his preliminary reluctance to speak.

As Charles had begun to attend first grade at the school across the road from home, Robert wanted to go to school, but his mother said he couldn’t.

“You’re only four. You have to wait another year,” she said, repeatedly.

Every afternoon, Robert stood in the window in his parents’ bedroom and watched for his brother to come home from school. The window in that room commanded the best view of the long sidewalk that ran to the southwest door of the school from a point across the highway from the driveway where Joe’s 1950 Chevrolet was parked, and it permitted Robert to see Charles striding past the automobile in the driveway to the gate through their white-board fence into the yard, thence along a narrow sidewalk to the porch east of the kitchen. Robert could hear the new Zenith television airing a telecast from its position atop a green Formica table with silvery tubular legs in the kitchen corner.

The television had not yet entirely replaced the dark brown 1949 Philco Bakelite radio standing amid the strands of white pop beads on Ida’s dresser, but the newfangled “TV” had certainly captured the family’s attention.

While Robert pulled back the white gauzy curtains to wait for Charles to appear, he wondered what Charles was learning that day and why he, Robert, was not allowed to learn the lessons at the same time. He felt miffed that he had to stay home through the long mornings and the boring afternoons while Charles got to participate in what must surely be the pleasures of schooling.

Then Robert would see Charles walking down the driveway, and envious thoughts were shoved aside by eager anticipation of playing until suppertime. Robert would run around the foot of the bed, through the kitchen, to the porch to greet Charles as he came through the screen door.

On this day, Robert scurried to welcome Charles home from school.

“What do you want to do until it’s time for chores?” Robert asked.

“What did you learn at school today?” Ida asked.

Charles smiled while he unzipped his gray jacket and hung it up. “We learned to subtract, but then, I already knew how to do that,” he replied to his mother.

Ida, who had taught elementary school, cast a worried glance at Robert. “Maybe I’m teaching you too much at home,” she said.

Robert tried to get his brother’s attention. “But what do you want to do?” he prompted.

“We’ll make a stage out of Tinkertoys,” Charles finally answered.

While Charles changed from his school clothes to his everyday clothes, Robert poured the Tinkertoys from their cans onto the rug in the living room.

“We’ll need a way to hang curtains on both sides of the stage,” Charles said, as he began to place green sticks in plain wooden disks. Robert handed the stage-maker whatever parts he needed as he called for them.

In a short time, a representative proscenium arch and stage stood before them, although they did not yet know the term “proscenium arch.” It was rather unstable but functional.

Robert and Charles were familiar with stages because their parents had taken them for lessons at Allen’s Dance Studio across from the Journal and Courier newspaper office in Lafayette.

Charles brought two plastic toy cows from the shelves where the toys were piled, and he held one in each hand on the stage. To Robert’s delight, he made them dance.

“Now we need curtains,” Charles said. “Mom,” he called, as he strode into the kitchen, “we need curtains for our stage.”

Ida was up to her elbows in suds while doing dishes. She turned and smiled at her son while wiping her hands on a towel. She returned to the living room and admired the stage before going to her room to pull material from a basket. She cut the curtains from leftover lightweight cotton and showed Charles how to pleat it while Robert looked on. Next, she used a knitting needle to pull a string through the pleats of both curtains. When she held up the curtains by the string, both boys were enchanted.

Charles carefully tied the string to both sides of the proscenium arch. He and Robert gently pulled the curtains closed and applauded their work. Obeying Charles’ instructions, Robert pulled the curtains open while Charles held the dancing cows on the stage. The effect was dramatic! They could hardly wait to show their father when he came in to get them for the evening chores.

Joe was generous in his praise of the stage. He kindly sat through a matinee performance of the dancing bovines. Then he announced that it was time to feed the real cows. Robert thought that maybe, when all human beings were out of sight, the real cows danced.

Spare Moments at My Folks' Farm 3

West Lafayette and Lafayette, Indiana, offered my parents many opportunities. We attended concerts and plays at Purdue University, and we frequently ate at the Union Building on the Purdue campus. In Lafayette, I took lessons on piano and clarinet. (I wound up passing my audition for the Indiana University School of Music as a piano major, although I later switched majors to English, and I played clarinet in the IU band program for nine years.) When I was very young, I performed in plays at Columbian Park. As we were often in Lafayette or West Lafayette, Smitty’s was a frequent destination. It was an independent grocery store that was big for its day. Following my parents up and down the aisles felt like being in a spacious state-of-the-art facility with every food on earth conveniently displayed.

My Photograph of Miss Ella Beegle

My First Piano Teacher

In Front of Her Home in Lafayette, Indiana

One of my childhood memories is having seen Purdue freshmen wearing beanies (a tradition at the time). In the throngs of people that crossed State Street were numerous international students, often in clothing from their countries. I was conscious of the fact that the world had come visiting a campus so near to my home. I knew I was destined to attend college. My mother insisted on my doing so. But I never dreamed I would earn three degrees, including the PhD in literature and would teach in a university for thirty-four years!

At Top Left, One of Miss Ruth Jamieson’s Windows

Above the Bank Designed by Louis Sullivan (1914)

When Ruth’s Father, George Andrew Jamieson, Was Cashier

As Well As County Auditor

And on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University’s School of Pharmacy

My first piano teacher, Miss Ella Beegle, had a studio at the top of a building that housed Allen’s Dance Studio across from the Journal & Courier newspaper headquarters. She was considerably older than my parents and was a kind, gracious woman who could hardly bring herself to correct a student. Eventually, she offered lessons from her home in half of a large, white house opposite the public library. While my brother took his lessons, I read books by Gene Stratton–Porter while seated in a deep window at the back of the library stacks. When Miss Beegle retired, I still had two years of high school ahead of me. (My brother was already attending college.) She recommended that I continue my training with Miss Ruth Jamieson.

Miss Ruth Jamieson’s Photograph of Me

Playing the Piano in Her Apartment in 1972

What a huge change! Miss Jamieson had a small apartment above a men’s clothing store near Purdue. I trudged up several flights of stairs that snapped as if they would break. In the gloom at the top, a dim light bulb, yellowed with grime, hung with no shade at the end of a dirty cord. I knocked, and Miss Jamieson swung open the door with her characteristic impulsiveness. Her piano was a reddish upright, nothing like the twin grand pianos that Miss Beegle owned. Miss Jamieson’s reading material lay wherever it fell on the sofa or on the carpet. Strings of beads separated her tiny living room from her kitchen, and, every now and then, she unexpectedly leapt up from her rocking chair, dove through the beads (which tinkled against one another), and returned with a heavily scented hand cream that she rubbed vigorously between her palms. For the first year of lessons, she negatively criticized every facet of my playing. Quite often, as I stood on a windy street corner waiting for my parents to pick me up after a lesson, I thought about quitting. At the beginning of my training under Miss Jamieson’s sharp tutelage, I could hardly have predicted that she would occupy the same place in my affections as a dearly loved aunt or that she would build me back up after tearing me down, transforming my playing until I was one of two students out of twenty accepted into the prestigious School of Music at IU on the day that I auditioned.

Photo of Me on Stage in Recital Hall

At Indiana University

Photograph by Randy Prange

In the beginning of my studies with Miss Jamieson, I often stumbled. At my first recital in Duncan Hall, I became lost in the movement of the Beethoven Sonata that I had memorized. My fingers flailed around, striking wrong notes in all directions. Instead of feeling horror or shame, I smiled. Why? Because, in my mind’s eye, I could just see the dramatic Miss Jamieson backstage, groaning, swooning, and falling to the floor.

Miss Jamieson designed separate exercises for each of my fingers, and she coined fascinating expressions to help me overcome difficult passages in the music. For a rapid run in a Beethoven Sonata, she said, “It’s like small monkeys scurrying up trees in the jungle.” Somehow, that description made it possible for me to play the run accurately every time. When she was young, she had studied in France for a lengthy period, and she affected a French manner, calling me “Ro-BAIR,” instead of Robert. As I look back, I think, “What a character!” She has been gone for many years, and I wonder how the earth can get along without such a powerful personality!