Playing "White Christmas"

 

I was going through some sheet music the other day and ran across a worn and fragile copy of "White Christmas."  I had to sit down for a minute to pick out the melody and enjoy a spell of remembering.  The only memory I really have of ever playing the piano at my great grandmother’s house was of playing this song from this very piece of music. 

I don’t know why that memory is so clear, but I can just see my little self, feet swinging and slowly stumbling through the notes while my grandmother smiled proudly and my great grandmother nodded her head.  My great grandmother Colley, Fannie Tate, was famous for saying to her young daughters when they tried to demur from playing for guests on that very piano, “Don’t say you can’t play; get up there and show us you can’t play.”  That thought might have been going through her mind the day I played "White Christmas" because I could not have been very far along with my piano lessons.  Actually, I probably don’t play it much better now than I did then because my piano playing is mediocre on my very best day. 

I have other memories of my great grandmother’s house in town.  She lived just off the square, in a small white frame house with a wide screened in front porch.  Growing up in a big drafty farmhouse, it seemed quite a modern house to me, with beautiful furniture and lovely pictures and knick-knacks to inspect.  Fancy candy dishes held wonderful treats and there were always cookies in the kitchen.  Best of all to a little girl, it had carpet in the living room, where that little girl could turn summersaults and tumble around without touching a cold, hard floor.  “Ma-Ma” as I called her, held court in a wingback chair, unless her youngest daughter, who was known to the world as Minnie Pearl, was on television, at which time she left whoever was visiting to sit in the dining room in front of the tv set and watch.  Her eyesight was pretty bad for as long as I can remember, and she sat about twelve inches from the screen, hands folded in her lap and smiling at the jokes she had heard a hundred times.

Ma-Ma was an accomplished musician, having graduated from Price’s College for Young Ladies with a degree in music.  She played at the Centerville Methodist Church and for every major event around Centerville during her younger days.  Her five daughters played piano, practicing on the big upright piano that now sits in my living room.  My grandmother followed in her footsteps, playing piano at our little country church in Shipps Bend and for various events around town.  I found out just a few years ago that she taught music for a while at the Shady Grove school and that she played piano in a popular band in Centerville as a teenager.  She played from printed notes, but she also played by ear, a talent I did not inherit and wish I had.  I’m sure the people at my church wish I was more accomplished, having suffered through my efforts to play hymns off and on throughout the years when we didn’t have a better pianist.

She also rode horses in her childhood, competing in horse shows all around the area and bringing home blue ribbons on a regular basis.  She bragged that she had a beau in every town she rode in and I don’t doubt it.  She was a Southern belle in every sense of the word, it seems.  But she chose love with a childhood friend who was 17 years older than she was.  He waited for her to grow up and finish school before bringing her from Franklin to Centerville, which must have been quite a shock, with its muddy streets and lack of the sophisticated social life she was accustomed to. 

When I was a child, I remember thinking she and all my great aunts and cousins were so sophisticated when they came to visit, with their city clothes and shoes and jewelry.  Ophelia kept her mother in nice clothes and hats and trinkets, and she was always dressed up.  I’m sure she would be horrified at my appearance in my sweatpants and oversized flannel shirts and I don’t even want to imagine what she would think of the music I listen to now.  I barely remember this, but I have heard stories all my life of how she would walk uptown every day, crossing the busy highway that led off the square, to eat lunch at Breece’s Café and to go to the post office for her mail.  As she grew older and her sight was failing, everyone worried about her crossing the streets, but she never was concerned.  She was vain enough not to want people to know she couldn’t see well.  The last few years she played organ at the Methodist Church, she would put the book up on the stand just as if she was using it to play.  Some people reported that half the time it was upside down, but no one ever pointed it out to her.  She hated to lose at bridge, and her daughters would cheat and let her win at their weekly bridge games.  Except Aunt Virginia, who refused to let her win and complained that the others spoiled her too much.  Aunt Virginia, even more than the other girls, inherited an independent spirit from her mother.  Once a visiting preacher at a revival delivered a scathing sermon on the evils of playing cards.  At the sermon’s close, he exhorted all the young ladies who played cards to come down to the altar and repent.  A group of tearful teens obeyed his call, but Aunt Virginia kept her seat.  She said she wasn’t about to stop playing cards and neither were they and they were just being dishonest to say they were.  I never asked what her mother had to say about it.  I imagine she was on Virginia’s side – she wasn’t about to stop playing bridge either!   Ma Ma’s husband said, during his lifetime, that she was the belle of Franklin and she never stopped ringing.  From my memories of her and the stories her daughters told, I expect he was right!