Week 110: Show & Tell 1

Señora Amalia died when I was 10 years old. She was our super old lady next door neighbor, a bit hunched over, hair white as snow, and one of those faces where the nose, eyes and mouth just disappear in a sea of wrinkles. Her and her house both had that smell of old skin and Florida Water that I have come to associate with super old ladies like Señora Amalia. As kids, we were scared of that smell, and of the lighting in her house that seemed as old as she was, and of all her odd-shaped furniture covered in doilies and miniature hand carved santos, but most of all we were scared of all her dead husband’s things scattered throughout the house.

You knew they were his things because they were all soldier things, a bayonet on the wall, medals on a side table, a picture of him in full uniform, a helmet here, a service cap there, a bookshelf full of books about the Great War… The stuff was all over the place, and all of it covered in a thin film of dust that made it clear that it had been a long time since it had been moved or touched.

As kids, we were scared of Señora Amalia and her house, but she always had a plentiful supply of giant sugar wafers in a can on top of her fridge. Mind you these were not the regular sugar wafers you get from Nabisco, all thin and with barely any cream inside. No, these were about three times as big, giant airy wafers surrounding so much cream that it spilled out the sides when you bit into them. So as kids we would steel our hearts and brave Señora Amalia’s hugs and kisses just for a couple of those sugar wafers.

As much as I was scared of her, I also loved Señora Amalia, I loved her haunted house full of strange stuff from another time, and I loved her for being the gatekeeper to that time. I imagined that once we left her house she would close the door and the place would come to life as it would’ve years before. Señora Amalia’s wrinkles and smell would disappear and her and her still living husband would play old records and dance or talk about the Great War or eat boxes of those delicious sugar wafers.

But Señora Amalia died and her grown children came to the house, and dumped most of her precious history unto the sidewalk for the garbage people to collect. A friend of mine and I went through all that stuff and salvaged the few things we could, a few camouflage, gold-tipped fountain pens, some old letters, a few books, little things that we could keep in our rooms.

***

Mrs. Witmire died when I was 29. She lived down the street from our house in the Heights neighborhood in Houston. I didn’t really know her, just saw her once in a while sitting on the rocking chair on her porch. And then one day she was gone and all her stuff was out on the curb waiting to be collected by the garbage people.

So of course I went through her things and found pages and pages of sheet music. Old sheet music printed during the first half of the 20th century. Most of it from the 1910s to 1930s, roaring twenties and minstrel show material. Songs with titles like After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It Anymore and Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue, Has Anybody Seen My Girl. Many of them have titles followed by parentheses such as I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store), and many of them have arrangements for piano and ukulele. The covers are often carefully designed some with stunning graphics.

I have a few of these framed in frameless frames hanging in our house and once in a while I go through the file where I keep them and change them out for new ones. Now that we have a piano in the house I am determined to learn to play some of these songs. For some reason they never seemed right on guitar.

One of my favorites is Dancing with Tears in My Eyes, written by the same team who wrote Tip-toe Through the Tulips With Me, and autographed by Rudy Vallee “to the Witmires.” Rudy Vallee’s haircut and smooth leer on the cover picture never fails to put me in a roaring twenties mood, which is when I roar and act like I’m twenty. har har. Thank you Mike Brady.

This post is the first in a series of show and tells, you know, like in school, but without the teacher telling me that my time is up. For this first installment I have told you a lot, but the one piece of sheet music that I really want to show you is Lewis, Young and Meyer’s Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night as sung by Al Jolson. So now I’ve said enough and here’s this absolutely fantastic representation of a song.