If music be the food of love, as it was for my father, the Bard recommended playing on, and Dad did. As a young man, he taught himself to play the piano with popular fare like Misty and One for My Baby. Later, he figured out how to read music. And took piano lessons. In that order.

Dad shared his love of music with his four children, starting with me. He indulged my diva tendencies, gamely providing accompaniment as I rendered old chestnuts like Sweet Betsy from Pike and Wee Cooper O’ Fife. He played my favorite records on the hi-fi – Tubby the Tuba, Peter & the Wolf, Burl Ives, the Limelighters, Mack the Knife – through the enormous white speaker console that filled one corner of the living room. He took me to the symphony on Friday nights, training me in the etiquette of not fidgeting or clapping between movements. I didn’t really like classical music (until I got older), but I loved stopping at Winkie’s on the way home for a burger-and-fries nightcap.

When I was in sixth grade, Dad built the harpsichord that now plays the lead in Play On. He let me help shave the little leather plectra (which he later replaced with Delrin plastic, an alternative the Zuckerman folks recommended because, while it was less authentic than leather, it didn’t get floppy with humidity). Dad taught me how the instrument worked and how to play it. And he put me in charge of banging away at the piano’s keys while he tuned the harpsichord to it. This was a frequent occurrence at first, because it took a while for the strings to finish stretching. I complained incessantly about how boring my assignment was, so he eventually got a “sight-tuner” that enabled solo tuning.

When my sisters achieved proficiency, Dad put together an arrangement of Sheep May Safely Graze for harpsichord (him), piano (me), and two flutes (the sisters). Our little family concerts occasionally went haywire when somebody (usually I) played enough wrong notes that the girls got laughing too hard to blow their flutes and we all dissolved in raucous hilarity. I wish I could find the audio cassette we recorded on one such occasion.

For years, Dad and I went to Mrs. Marracino’s house in Glenshaw every Tuesday at five for piano lessons. He eavesdropped on my half hour, then I did homework during his. The house usually smelled delicious because Mr. Marracino was as good a cook as he was a jazz musician.

On the drive home, Dad invariably caught me off guard with what he called a “horse bite” – a viciously tickley pinch just above my knee-cap. I always knew it was coming, but somehow he got me every time. He was an accomplished prankster.

I gave up on piano lessons as a teenager when I got too busy with school and drama and boys. By that time, it was apparent that I was never going to be a very good player. Mrs. Marracino’s regretful goodbye note is among the artifacts wall-papering the back of the harpsichord.

Dad stuck with his own lessons, playing with increasing mastery. When the Marracinos moved to a bigger house and added a second piano, he and Lucretia played music written for four hands. Eventually, Dad developed a hankering to compose something of his own, so he found someone to teach him how. His debut composition, M.F.P. (“My First Piece”), was so complicated that he couldn’t play it.

At some point, Dad decided he should copyright his work. He wrote to the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress to request instructions and whatever forms he needed to proceed. In typical wise-guy style, he ended his letter saying “please send multiple copies of the application form as I am in my prolific phase.”

On a techno-cultural note…

The 1934 Victrola cabinet, which belonged to my grand-parents (Mom’s Aspiring Anglican mother and Hillbilly Scholar father), once contained a radio and 78-RPM turntable for playing the heavy, single-sided RCA Victor records in the multi-sleeve book behind the Dual, a popular brand of approximately the same vintage as the Pioneer in the center compartment.

Dad built the Heathkit turntable-cum-AM/FM radio in the late 70s. In addition to the manuals underneath, Dad saved reams of diagrams and schematics and pages of corrections, addenda, clarifications and disclaimers. In spite of which, Dad somehow managed to construct the thing well enough that it still works. (Except it no longer has a needle.)

The assortment of receivers, speakers and listening equipment hints at trends in product size, style, material, rate of obsolescence, and frequency of “up-grade” over the years. From the enormous corner hi-fi cabinet of my childhood, which was with us from 1954 through 1961 (our tenure at 1139 Ingomar Heights Road); through reel-to-reel tape (represented by the splicing tape I used to edit radio programs in college); to today’s thumb drives, micro SD cards, iPhones and Air Pods; product innovations have transformed their ancestral technologies into useless, forgotten relics.

Likewise, sheet music, vinyl records, 8-tracks, audio cassettes, CDs and DVDs have become things of the past as the equipment needed to produce and play them has gone out of production. Hence the installation’s cascades and puddles. (Granted, vinyl is gaining new, “retro” popularity, but that fact muddies my point, so let’s ignore it for now.)

Dad died in 1989 at the age of 67. I don’t miss the obsolete technologies (although I resent being forced into expensive upgrades, seemingly weekly). But I sure do miss my wiseacre, renaissance Dad.

Meg Dooley, March 2020

MegDooleyArt.com