Notes from the Field

When I think about it, a lot of my life has been dedicated to being an effective old guy. Learn to play mandolin, learn to fly fish, learn to smoke cigars, learn to drink bourbon, learn to tell good stories, learn to talk with people and make them feel welcome, learn how much nonsense to tolerate and how to handle things when the limit has been exceeded, all the stuff you expect a person who has been around to know how to do.

And I started early. I mean do the math. If you want to be an old guy who has been fly fishing for 20 years, you have to start fly fishing something like 20 years before you become an old guy. If you want to be that guy who knows all those old tunes and has been playing like forever, you have to learn the tunes before they get old, and start playing early enough that it seems like forever when you tell them how long you have been playing. And as for cigars, well if you are going to smoke cigars when you are an old guy, you have to have already learned how to light them, how to hold them, and how to cuss with the dern thing in your mouth. Nothing worse than looking like a cigar newbie, setting your beard on fire, at an age where you are supposed to look practiced and wise.

When I turned 30, I decided to figure out what “my drink” was going to be. A man over thirty, when asked “what’ll you have” should not have to hem and haw and decide “yikes, do I go with the little umbrella or the plastic sword with the olives?” You should know your drink. So I thought long and hard about it, and tried a little of everything. It has to be something manly, of course, no tricky names, and it has to be something you like well enough. It has to go with most kinds of food. Also you don’t want it to be so top shelf that nobody has it, or too cheap and shabby looking. After about six months of intense field research I decided on bourbon and soda. And after another month of more focused research I decided on Old Grand Dad. Right there in the middle, not so high falootin a bourbon that folks think you are showing off, but having a certain aura of respectability.

And when I turned 35 I became a founding partner in a start up company. I had learned from television cartoons in my youth and from playing Monopoly, that people who had their own companies smoked cigars. So I entered the world of stogies, watched a lot of Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood, Peter Falk, and figured out the requisite skills.

Mandolin I have been doing for ever. For longer than I have been gainfully employed. It was love at first sight, when, in high school, a friend of mine who played mandolin and violin showed me where to put my fingers and how to pick. I went home and borrowed one of my Dad’s tenor banjos, tuned it in fifths, got out an old clarinet beginners book, and had at it. I played any kind of music that was around. I played my folks LPs, putting about $2.75 in quarters on the turntable to slow them down exactly one fifth, so I could learn the tunes one string down.

I have always sought out the experienced in whatever I do. To learn from them. To gain from their hard won experience. To try and see what I might become, and to see myself in their eyes, watch them looking at me with patience, or irritation. Older people taught me how to play mandolin, how to cast a fly rod, and by emulating the older folks I have learned how to look experienced smoking a cigar, ordering a drink, tell a good joke or story.

I have never understood hanging out exclusively with ones own age group, all of us sharing our lack of experience, combining our individual ignorance together into one big stupid.

One of the things I have always liked about playing music was the respect shown to the elderly. Early on I watched as the musical community, be it a string band or a regular jam session, a folk song club, or an open mike coffeehouse, universally showed respect and veneration toward the old and experienced musicians. Folks listened and learned from the experienced players, and adopted aspects of their style. I learned tunes and songs and heard stories about days long before I was born, picked up tips and tricks and gained invaluable experience from those who had invaluable experience to share. It was part of the tradition. Part of what you did. In stark contrast to so many other parts of our culture, the old were not irrelevant in music. No, they seemed important to the music. Important to peoples’ enjoyment of the music. They were the link, the visible part of a chain that stretches back to the “old time days.” Fiddlers now old, learned in their youth from fiddlers who were then old, who in their youth learned from the experienced fiddlers they knew and so on back and back and back. And me, a young guy trying to make sense of all of this, I absorbed the traditions, the tunes, the stories, the good talk, I soaked it all up like a sponge. This music, participatory music, folk music, was something substantive, significant. I could be a part of something ancient, have a connection with the distant past, and at the same time unwind for myself a future where I would be relevant. I would eventually have my own tunes to share and stories to tell. And between the past and the future there was a lot of fun to be had, learning tunes, playing with and making friends.

Just the other day I was watching a television show about genealogy. This woman had found in her family tree evidence that she had a great great-uncle, from eastern Kentucky I think she said, who apparently, all those many years ago, used to invite fiddle and banjo players to his house and play music with them until late at night. That was the only thing she knew about her great great-uncle. It was all anyone knew. But it was enough. It made him real to her. Made him immortal.

It struck me that my nephews’ great grand children and their children will be able to say that, because a hundred or so years from now I will be that distant relative who invited banjos and fiddles over to play all night. But only if, ....you guessed it, I get on the phone and invite some folks over. Timing is everything. Do the math.

So, soon enough, I will be graduating into the world of the old guy. I don’t know exactly when, or what the ceremony is, but if it involves “pull my finger” jokes, I am ready. Indeed I am practiced.