Skip to main content

Odd Man on the Hill

After writing about learning to play Maple Leaf Rag, I have been compelled to reminisce about Mr. Stevesand, my piano teacher throughout high school.

As I mentioned, he was a math teacher, and he taught piano on weekends and some evenings. He was a bachelor and lived in a big house on a hill, so there was no one to mind a string of kids banging away at Moonlight Sonata or Fur Elise for hours on end.

When I first started taking lessons there, I didn't have my drivers' license yet, so my mother drove me. She sat in the kitchen and read while I played in the living room, and afterwards she would complain that I was learning all this classical stuff but not learning to play hymns for church. Why couldn't he teach me to play hymns for church? Mr. Stevesand's cats kept my mother company, hopping up on the table and walking around on the kitchen counter. Sometimes they would eat from the dirty pans on the stove, and sometimes they would just lay around on the floor.

They were pure bred Himalayans, and when they had kittens, I was allowed to take one home. I named him Winston Churchill, and he was a beauty. He never once ate from the pans on the stove, although he was prone to peeing on the carpet. I think Winston Churchill was slightly over bred.

Mr. Stevesand was a great teacher, encouraging me to try for more and more difficult literature and tolerating my delight for Debussy. He guided me through lessons for four years, and he put up with my distaste for scales and exercises. He even let me continue with lessons after I pressed too hard on the foot pedal of that old grand, and it broke right off. I was gentler when he got a new piano.

Good old Mr. Stevesand. When I finally stopped taking lessons my senior year, I missed his odd hair that stuck straight up and his thick glasses that still didn't help him to clearly see the notes on the page and his big fumbling fingers that used to glide over the keys but had begun to stumble over them as he aged and grew in girth.

I don't have a picture of my piano teacher, but here is a picture of Winston Churchill. Wasn't he gorgeous?

Comments

Sassy Sundry said…
Winston's a great name for a cat.

You have the best collection of oddball characters in your past, Robyn. I love all of them.

I think I'm going to whine, "Why couldn't he teach me to play hymns for church?" at least once today.
dive said…
What a beautiful cat, Robyn. And a great name.
Sassy's right about your collection of eccentric oddballs. They should appear in your next novel.
Gina said…
Yes, great name! Did you always call him by the full name or did you shorten it?

He was gorgeous.
Scout said…
Sassy, I bet we all have a collection of oddballs if we just stop and look.

Dive, I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe Maryann could take up the piano.

Gina, I was Winston when he was cute and cuddly, but he got the full name when he peed on the floor.
nice story and I can see why you named the cat Winston Churchill.
I don't like cats, Robyn sorry, but i like Winston Churchill and your piano teacher sounds quirky and memorable. What a pity you don't have a pic.

How are you? Long time no blog.

Popular posts from this blog

Cindy Loo Who In October

What is it with people and Cindy Loo Who? Of my last one hundred blog hits, forty have been direct visits from regular readers, and fifteen have been as a result of people searching for "Cindy Loo Who," the little pixie from Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas . A couple of years ago, I posted an image of the original Seuss illustration as compared to the TV cartoon image, and for some reason, that post is bringing in the crowds, relatively. Maybe it's the weather. It isn't even November yet, and already we've had frost and have had to dust off our winter coats. When it gets cold like this, I start to think about Christmasy things like listening to Nat King Cole and decorating the tree. It's ironic because I am offended when retailers start pushing holiday stuff early, but I don't mind my own private celebrations. When my sister and I were much younger and still living with our parents, we would pick a day in July, close the curtains to darken the ...

The Ultimate Storyteller—in Life AND in Death

I wrote about The Autobiography of Mark Twain in yesterday's edition of Small Town Newspaper. You can read it here , if you want. This is the photograph I had in mind while I read Clemens' dictations. He really was a masterful storyteller, even when rambling on about the poorly designed door knobs in Florence or in describing the Countess Massiglia, who he described as a "pestiferous character." About her, he said, “She is excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, obscene, a furious blusterer on the outside and at heart a coward.” And I laughed out loud.