The Banjo

The Banjo

 

Not much to post about these days, but this memory was stirred by a post from Rick @ https://www.rickwatson-writer.com/ .

 

Years ago, when I was in High School, so lots of years ago, I found an old banjo in our basement.  Now I always sort of thought it would be fun to play banjo, but this banjo was broken.  At the time I did not want to play an instrument badly enough to try and fix an old broken banjo.

I did think the banjo was beautiful.  It came in a hard case, had a nice wooden neck and what I later learned was a resonator.  The neck was covered with ivory inlay markings.  It was pretty, but it was broken. 

It was a four-string tenor banjo, but two strings were broken so it wouldn’t play.

A few years after my find, my brother brought a friend from college home for a visit.  The friend mentioned that he wanted to learn to play banjo.

My Pops spoke up,

“I have an old banjo in the basement.  It is old but it is a nice one and I never play it anymore.”

I was about to speak up and tell him that it was broken, when the friend spoke,

“Oh, thanks, but I couldn’t take it.”

“Nonsense, it is of no use to me, it is perfectly good, it only needs to be restrung.”

The friend took the banjo. 

I often wonder about that old banjo.  I might have tried playing if I knew strings were easily replaced.  I never thought to ask Pops about it before he passed.

My guess is that it was not a cheap banjo.  Cheap instruments are not always carried in an expensive hard case.  A cheap banjo might go for $100, and a good hard case $50.  Who would put a cheap banjo in an expensive case?

Also, my Dad did not often buy cheap.  He was thrifty, but he did not buy cheap stuff.  I’m not sure they even sold cheap banjos when he would have bought this one.  In the 1930’s they did not import stringed instruments from Taiwan, or Indonesia.  I doubt banjos were mass produced at home either.

My guess from researching the internet, and my best recollection, is the banjo was a Gibson, a very fine and expensive banjo.  This is mostly based on all the ivory inlays that I remember.

If only I had spoken up when I first saw that old banjo. I might have had a lot of fun with it, but mostly it would have been like having a piece of my Pops.

Broken strings are replaceable…who knew?

Oh well, I could probably afford to replace that banjo, but it would not be the same.  

I still have the memories of the old banjo, and my Pops.

The memories, unlike the strings, are not replaceable.