Banjo Man

Harvey Silverman                           

The music is in my head when I wake up. Familiar but unrecognized. It plays over and over. While my sweetheart sleeps I quietly head downstairs to morning coffee. Safely in the kitchen I find myself whistling the tune. I never do that. I wonder what is going on.

After a bit I identify the song. It is “Rambling Boy,” a piece my best friend David used to do, playing his banjo and singing in that sweet way he did. But David sang other songs much more often; when I think of him those are the songs that come to mind. Still, I am happy for the memory of this dearest of friends. The music repeats over and over again in my consciousness all morning. I cannot stop it.

                                                                     ***

The roar of race cars, alongside the tidal river, is disturbing. Annoying and out of place. A counselor at our boys summer camp has brought a phonograph and plays a recording of race cars as he exalts his favorite driver, Stirling Moss. In 1959, twelve and thirteen year olds want to swim, play ball, sail. Rest periods are for the top forty on the radio, card games, comic books, and in a time before internet, cell phones, and ubiquitous pornography, discussing the mysteries that capture the curiosity and focus of the peripubescent. 

The counselor, an unconventional fellow – appropriately goateed – named Mike, also plays records of music unlike the radio offerings of our favorite DJ, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg. Rather than “Charlie Brown” by the Coasters or Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans,” Mike plays folk music.

Folk Music. The Weavers. Pete Seeger, others. Most of us just ignore it. But not David. He listens and likes the music. A lot. He spends a fair amount of time listening to Mike’s folk records. Sometime later, summer camp over and back home, he persuades his parents to allow him to get a banjo – a five string banjo like Pete plays – and agrees to the condition that he take banjo lessons. After a few sessions with Mr. Pruneau, David decides he will learn on his own, stops spending time with the instructor, and becomes self-taught.

                                                                 

Later that day, after I have identified the music as “Rambling Boy,” I, without realizing it at first, am softly humming the song and listening to the words of the chorus, gradually recalled, in my mind. While I know the chorus of “Rambling Boy” I do not know the verses. The song still on an endless loop in my head, and wondering why the song suddenly appeared, I go to YouTube, find it, learn it is by Tom Paxton, one of David’s favorite folk singers, and listen, enjoying it. When I hear the final verse, I must stop for a moment. “If when we die we go somewhere, I bet you a dollar he’s rambling there.” 

I think of David. Strumming his banjo?

                                                                       

He is not a great banjo player and he does not have a terrific voice. But good enough. More than good enough. David has a way about him, a certain ability – a charm – to drawn one in and hold tight, that makes listening to him enjoyable, comfortable. His voice is pleasant, his banjo a happy accessory.

He is good enough that by the end of high school he plays to small groups. During a college summer when he travels to Europe, wandering about here and there, he takes his banjo along and stays at youth hostels for free, exchanging performing for a bed.

For us, his friends, sitting about listening to David is simply fun and something to which to look forward. He sings a variety of songs – serious folk music – along with fun or silly songs like Woody Guthrie’s “Mail Myself to You,” or Tom Paxton’s “Going to the Zoo.” He even has a sort of “signature” song, “The Highwayman,” the Noyes poem put to music by Phil Oakes. When David does “The Highwayman,” it is a sign that he is done for the evening.

After college he moves to Gloucester, Massachusetts, and lives in an attic. In a few years he buys the house, has the attic enlarged to include a large living room with floor to ceiling windows that feature a magnificent view of the harbor. We listen to David play and sing there while he sits in his favorite chair and sips a favorite drink – white wine with an ice cube. 

David is at his best at these times. The banjo has become a part of his identity. The mild neuroses that he has had for years, the minimal tremor that makes his handwriting nearly illegible or produces a slight shaking when he raises a glass, all disappear when he performs.

It does not matter where he is. Visits to our home or that of other friends, very special weekends at an isolated Cape Cod beachfront cottage that lacks utilities and thereby requires candles or a Coleman lantern, produce the same salubrious effect while his audience embraces it all. The blissful times continue for decades.

He carries his banjo in a cheap case. Over the years the case becomes beaten and battered. He has no reason to replace it.

                                                                       

Eventually he plays less often. In our late sixties, having not heard him for a few years, I ask him why he stopped.

“I don’t know. I just did.”

He still sits in his favorite chair when I visit, the view from his living room remains splendid. He continues to enjoy that favorite drink, the slight tremor when he brings the glass to his lips again present. 

The news that he is suddenly critically ill with infection is crushing, his death the following day nearly overwhelming.

His funeral is dreary, the service dreary, the eulogies dreary, the burial at the cemetery on a cold and overcast day dreary. 

Six months later, on a more pleasant day, some friends and family gather at the gravesite. We share stories and memories. We return to his empty home, his chair, his view. More stories, more memories. After a brief stay my sweetheart and I wish all goodbye. Down the stairs – on the landing – leaning against a corner wall is his banjo case, worn, torn, and tattered.

                                                                   

March 15, 2024. My dad’s birthday, sixteen years after his death, six years after David’s. I dream before the morning’s sunrise.

There is no one seen in the dream; it is simply a view of the back porch of my home from the vantage point of the middle of the driveway, where my dad parked his car when visiting and where he lifted from the automobile the pies my mom baked. Softly I hear David’s voice, singing quietly and sweetly, “one too many…”

I am now awake. I know this song but struggle to find the next word. Quickly I find it online, a Dylan song that David sometimes sang, “one too many mornings.”

Yes, too many birthday mornings without my dad. For a moment I think of the banjo case and wonder if the banjo was inside.