1970: Collecting Rocks vs. Singing in Chorus

By Corinne H. Smith

1970:  I turned thirteen years old.  I was in eighth grade at Centerville Junior High School, where Mr. Simpson was my homeroom teacher.  Daddy was 41, and he worked as a research chemist at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Penna.  Mom was beginning to work as a nurse for a local clinic.  We lived on Dale Avenue in West Hempfield Township.  The #1 most popular song on the radio on my thirteenth birthday was “I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family.  Mom snapped this photograph. (Obviously we were a little late with the November birthday photo this year.  You can see the edge of our Christmas tree on the right-hand side.)

     When we were in junior high school, our class schedules included a club meeting period on Wednesdays at the end of the day.  Ninth period.  Picking a club was a way to avoid a 44-minute sentence of sitting in homeroom for a study hall instead.  As a result, most students were in clubs.

     Our options were printed in our trusty student handbooks.  Here’s the list.

from Handbook, 1969-1970, Centerville Junior High School, pp. 25-26

     I chose to join Rock and Mineral Club.  I’d been picking up pebbles and rocks for years, especially while I was riding my bicycle around our neighborhood.  Daddy encouraged me, since he was a scientist and liked rocks, too.  Pieces of common ordinary white quartz were my favorites.  Where we lived, it was easy to find.  So was limestone.  So I littered our basement with favorite chunks of quartz and limestone.  Half of the gravel in our alleyway probably ended up in our house.

     I thought that it could be fun to talk about rocks with other people.  I found it amazing that enough students were interested in rocks that an entire junior high club was dedicated to the subject.  Basically, the meetings were just okay.  I always sat in the background with another girl – I can’t remember who she was -- while some of the guys – yes, the membership was almost entirely male – chattered with our advisor Mr. Eckert about breaking into local abandoned quarries and finding trilobites, little bits of fossils.  And geodes!  Where in the world did they find crystal-filled geodes around here?  Why didn’t these goodies land in my bicycle path?  Still, it was an interesting experience.  It was certainly better than sitting in homeroom, doing homework at the end of the school day.

     But deciding in favor of rocks had a consequence that involved music.  I played flute and piccolo in the junior high school band.  Our band rehearsals were worked into our schedules.  I believe that the regular girls’ and boys’ choruses met at the same time, and that you couldn’t be in both band and chorus in junior high.  But I'm pretty sure that at least one choral group met during the Wednesday club period.  If you wanted to sing in this group, you couldn’t be in a club at the same time.  By saying Yes to rocks, I was saying No to chorus.

     This probably doesn’t sound like a big deal.  But our school district had a terrific reputation when it came to music.  One of the jewels in its crown was the high school’s spring musical, put on by the Hempfield Singers, the esteemed chorus for 11th and 12th graders.  If you were in this group, you’d at least be in the chorus for the musical.  You’d be on stage.  You would also get to perform at school concerts and for private singing appearances around the area.  You would wear a choral robe of the school colors.  You would have prestige.

     And if this was your goal, then you and your parents would already be planning ahead when you were in junior high.  So on the page following the list of clubs, the school authorities conveniently outlined a process for reaching it.

  

from Handbook, 1969-1970, Centerville Junior High School, p. 27

     The choral track was clear.  Start singing in junior high and audition for the Intermediate Singers (for 9th and 10th graders) at the end of 8th grade.  Or join one of the lesser choruses in 9th grade, and audition for Intermediate Singers at the end of the year.  Then you would be in line to seamlessly advance to Hempfield Singers in 11th grade.

     Armed with this information, I reassured my parents – probably primarily my mother, who would have been concerned, expectant, and insistent – that I had a way of reaching Hempfield Singers in 11th grade even though I chose to meet with Rock and Mineral Club in junior high.

    And that’s what I did.  I sang alto with the Singing Ladies in 9th grade.  At the end of the year, I auditioned for Intermediate Singers.  One of our try-out songs was “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.  Having perfect pitch gave me an advantage during the audition … but that’s a story for another day.  I succeeded.  I made it.  I was in Intermediate Singers in 10th grade, and in Hempfield Singers for 11th and 12th.  I was in the chorus (and also on the scenery painting committee) for Annie Get Your Gun and Half a Sixpence.  I got to wear the red robe, much to my mother’s delight.

     I can sing if I have to, though it’s been more than 20 years since I sang in any sort of organized group.  But I still collect rocks, just about anywhere I go.  I have jars of them.  Many jars of them.  Quartz is still my favorite.  I’ve even found a few fossils along the way.  No geodes, though.  And I still believe I made the right decision in junior high:  Rocks over Chorus.  It was once a nonconformist’s route to the stage.  Now picking up rocks is one of my favorite things to do, while traveling around the countryside.  I'm sure I'll do it for the rest of my life.

a small portion of my rock collection

Blog EXTRA: Perfect Pitch

By Corinne H. Smith

     When I was growing up, our house was always filled with music.  Daddy’s specialties were (and still are) the flute and the piccolo, with the occasional saxophone and rare clarinet thrown into the medley.  He has played with local community bands, big bands, musical pit orchestras, and small combos nearly non-stop since he found his first piccolo under the Christmas tree at the age of nine.  One of his main teachers and influences was Berthold “Bert” Wavrek, a piccolo player with the Allentown Band, and a man who had performed and toured with John Philip Sousa.  Daddy still plays in church every Sunday and has done so since about the mid-1990s.

     Mom sang alto in the church choir and also played the piano.  She had a trick that she unveiled whenever she and my father entertained friends.  She turned the piano bench so that it was perpendicular to the instrument.  Then she lay down on it, with her face nearly underneath the keyboard.  She put her hands on the ivories – upside down, backward, and over her head -- and played a bouncy version of “Somebody Else is Taking my Place.”  I wish we had been able to film her in action.

     I began taking piano lessons when I was in kindergarten.  Mrs. Hiestand in Salunga was my piano teacher.  So it was from her that I first learned scales, key signatures, and how to read music.  Once I hit fourth grade, I took flute and piccolo lessons from my father instead, so that I could be in the band.  I still played the piano afterwards, but just for personal enjoyment.  A lot of this came later than the story I’m about to tell.

Me and Daddy: An early duet, before I even started taking piano lessons

     One day my mother sat at the piano in our dining room, practicing for the voice lessons that she was taking.  She played a note on the piano and then sang “mah-may-mee-mo-moo” on it.  Over and over, on various notes, moving up and down the scale. 

     I couldn’t understand why this exercise was so important.  I was busy in my toy corner at the opposite side of the room, playing with Barbie and Midge and Ken in their dream house.  I was quiet and could certainly hear what my mother was doing.  She ended by focusing on one particular note, singing “mah-may-mee-mo-moo,” again and again and again.

     When Mom finally paused, I said to her, “That’s a whole lot of Gs you’re singing.”  I made it as a casual remark.  I certainly didn’t think anything of it.  I was more focused on rearranging Barbie’s cardboard furniture to accommodate Skipper and Scooter.

     Mom stopped short.  “How did you know I was singing a G?” she asked.

     I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I can just tell.”

     She didn’t believe me at first.  She began to hit other notes at random, testing me.  I recognized each pitch and told her what each one was.  By this time I had been taking piano lessons for a while.  I knew what the notes sounded like.  I played them whenever I practiced.  I didn’t see what the big deal was.  Couldn’t everybody do this?

     Here began a new parlor game, added to the repertoire of Mom’s party trick with the upside-down piano playing.  Strike a note and ask Corinne which one it is.  To their credit, my parents didn’t do this very often.  The uniqueness didn’t wear too thin.  After all, having perfect pitch isn’t exactly a marketable skill.  It doesn’t make me a flawless musician.  It merely means that I can identify the notes just by hearing them.

     It’s been rare when I’ve admitted having this ability, even to friends.  However, I do remember the issue arising in one session of Mr. Nolt’s seventh-grade music class at Centerville Junior High School.  We must have been studying Mozart, who famously had both perfect pitch and a photographic memory.  Mr. Nolt must have asked if anyone in the class had perfect pitch.  Unbelievably, I felt the need to raise my hand.

     “You have perfect pitch?” he asked.

     “Yes,” I said, nodding.

     “I do, too!” shouted the boy sitting right in front of me, thrusting his arm into the air.  Let’s say that his first name started with S.  S had been in some of my classes at Farmdale Elementary School.  We were not friends; we were more like wary adversaries.  I could not believe that S was claiming to have perfect pitch.  I was sure he didn’t.  Evidently Mr. Nolt doubted it, too.

     “OK.  What’s this note?” he asked.  Without looking, he dropped his hand to the piano keyboard, and his finger landed on the two tones that most people use to start the ditty called “Chopsticks.”

     “That’s not a note!” quipped S.

     “Yes it is,” I said.  “It’s F and G together.”

     The bell rang, and we filed out of the classroom.  As I stepped into the hallway, Mr. Nolt called out, “Don’t touch her, she’s Mozart!”  That was pretty cool of him to say, that day.  It made me feel good.  Naturally, in the end, it didn’t really mean anything.

     We wondered how I’d gotten perfect pitch.  Was it inherited?  Daddy said that he had relative pitch, and that he could get close to identifying tones, especially when hearing flute music.  For decades now, he’s been prodding me, showing me notices advertising the “Genetics of Absolute Pitch Study” at the University of California at San Francisco.  Researchers want to pinpoint the exact gene that is associated with this ability.  They want to collect as many DNA samples as they can so that comparisons can be made.  No thanks.  I refuse to donate mine to the cause.  They’ll have to compile their statistics without me.

     I never read anything about perfect pitch until I picked up the book Musicophilia:  Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks.  It’s a terrific read.  Dr. Sacks devotes a whole chapter to perfect pitch, seemingly because it’s one of several music-related anomalies that he’s dealt with as a neurologist.  Hmm.  Yes, it was an invaluable talent that gave me an advantage in music theory class in high school.  And it sure helps whenever I sit down to figure out how to play popular songs on the piano just by listening to recordings of them.

     I’m still thinking that it may be even more fun to learn how to play a honky-tonk tune upside down and backward, while lying on a piano bench. 

Blog EXTRA: Straw Paper Caterpillars

By Corinne H. Smith


     When I was a child, my mother showed me how to make straw paper caterpillars.  The first part of this exciting discovery was that it happened during our inaugural visit to a department store lunch counter together.  The second was the fun in learning how the item was crafted and put into action.

     I believe this event first took place at a lunch counter at one of the department stores in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s.  At the time, the three local stores were Watt & Shand, Hager, and Garvin’s.  In my memory, the unveiling took place at Garvin’s.  I’m not sure that the other two had lunch counters.

     Anyway, once she showed me the trick, we did it again any time we went out to lunch or dinner, either with just the two of us or in the company of my father.  Without fanfare, one or both of us would manipulate and activate our straw papers.  Sometimes we had a contest to see whose paper caterpillar moved best.  I haven’t met many people who have heard of or seen this phenomenon.  So even though it’s a simple feat, I offer illustrated instructions here.  I apologize for the brightness of the camera flash on the straw paper.  But you should get the idea.

1. Order a drink that the wait staff will deliver with a paper-encased straw.  Or, get your own at your favorite fast food outlet.

2. Tear open the straw paper at just one end.  Do not remove it from the straw yet.

3. Grasp the straw in your dominant hand and hold it vertically against the table top.

4. Tap the straw on the table.  Keep your hand on the paper covering, and lightly push the paper down the length of the straw, toward the table, with each tap.

5. With any success, you’ll end up with the paper looking very much like a tiny accordion.  Or a caterpillar, if you will.

6. Now, here’s the fun part.  “Do you want to see the caterpillar crawl?” my mother asked.  Naturally I did.  So she took her straw and placed it into the drink – just far enough to allow about an eighth of an inch of beverage into it.  She put her finger over the open end of the straw to keep the liquid inside.  Then she held the straw over the caterpillar and eased her finger up.  The beverage dampened the paper and caused it to expand, looking as though it was indeed a crawling caterpillar.

7. Helpful hint #1:  Straw papers aren’t made as loose as they used to be.  Creating a caterpillar may be impossible with some of them.  They’ll tear before you have a finished product.  If you meet with disaster at first, keep looking for an eatery with more suitable straw papers.

8. Helpful hint #2:  Don’t lift too much beverage into your straw; otherwise, you’ll end up with a soggy mess in the middle of the table.  And when you let it drip over the paper, aim first for the tightest folds of the caterpillar.  Go for the drama.  Don’t be afraid to put more liquid on the other folded portions.  The caterpillar will then move in various directions.

Good luck!  Have fun!