(non-fiction)
“Dad, teach me something!”
Greg’s repeated demand was starting to irritate me. Sitting in the farmhouse living room on Christmas night, his electric guitar in hand, he had already blasted through his entire repertoire of heavy metal songs, accompanied by the MP3 player built into his phone. His Who t-shirt, replete with tie-dye sleeves and a vivid red and blue Union Jack, was draped loosely over his adolescent frame. His blond hair cascaded over his face as he leaned intently over his instrument, decoding a chord progression. Had you but seen his face through the dangling growth, he would’ve looked like an early version of me many years ago.
In ten days he would turn thirteen years old, already a better guitarist than his father. Though he lacked poise and stage experience, he far surpassed my technical ability; quite an accomplishment considering I was his first guitar teacher a few years ago (had it been that long already?)
I finally responded to him. “Greg, what can I teach you? When I suggest a song, you don’t want to hear it.”
“I just want you to teach me something on guitar.”
“I’ve already taught you everything I know.” I didn’t mean to sound dismissive but the statement was essentially true.
Tom was in the kitchen, snacking on apples and chips, and listening to the sparring going on between his younger brother and me. At age fifteen he stood rail-thin in camouflage pants and a black Pantera t-shirt, topped by a head of bushy brown hair, and already equal to my height of six feet. He was the bass player of his own band back home.
He motioned me into the kitchen. “Just play a bunch of chords real fast,” he whispered to me, “and pretend it’s some song. See if he falls for it.”
I had difficulty keeping a straight face as I returned to the living room. I played some chords in a somewhat-original pattern then handed the guitar back to Greg. He repeated flawlessly the bogus sequence I’d just made up.
“Wait a minute. What song is this?”
Tom doubled over in laughter.
We’d endured an eleven-hour car trip on Christmas Eve to spend two full days here in Tennessee. The travel time was quickly justified. During our stay we saw the holiday lights of Opryland, took target practice with my late father’s rifle, visited guitar shops in Nashville, played music, walked around the farm, cooked and ate steak, and made a bonfire.
Their mother, my wife Pat, was back home in Pittsburgh, not happy that I took them on this trip. She had just begun a new job and had no vacation time. Even though we’d celebrated our Christmas as a family on December 23rd, we were leaving her alone.
But the three of us were overdue for some male bonding. A cliche, yes, but boys and their fathers appreciate the value of this implicitly. And what better place? This farm in Cane Creek would be theirs someday; a place of heritage passed down through their maternal side: their grandmother was born and raised here.
About two years ago I watched in awe as the boys’ musicianship started to flourish with only minimal encouragement from me.
I took pride in reminding them that their love of music continued an unbroken legacy that began with their great-great-grandfather Josef Kump, the village musician in the German-speaking enclave of Slovenia that was the home of my ancestors.
So it was early on a December morning, with both of them still fast asleep, that I sat drinking coffee contentedly in the farmhouse, contemplating parenthood, genetics, and how one makes the progression from German folk music to heavy metal in four generations. Knowing the appetites of teenage boys, I also mentally divided the remaining food by the hours until our departure, to ensure no one was going to starve.
“Come on, you hippie. Play something by Zeppelin.”
Greg was determined to get something of value out of me. The hippie comeback was an inside joke between us; he wasn’t being disrespectful. I started playing Communications Breakdown and a smile of recognition lit his face as he started nodding his head to the 36-year-old rhythm, his hair following a few milliseconds behind. How could he possibly know this song? He explained that he’d first heard it in one of his skateboarding videos. I’d seen these videos before, and remembered how countless rock oldies provided an appropriately retro soundtrack for all those grinds, jumps, flips and spills.
He grabbed the guitar out of my hands before I was done, and repeated the song back to me. The propane heater sprang to life, keeping the farmhouse warm as two revered traditions continued.
Writing collection 