A Generation Passes

Will the next generation play harmonicas?

I don't know but it seems that a generation and its songs are passing on.

Last night, I watched and listened as friends from our church played songs of long ago. Two harmonicas, a guitar and a banjo. It was music of a generation passing into history to join generations before them. It was like a dove's song sweetly sung before just before the sun set and the moon began to rise.

I thought back to my time as a boy. TV was in its infancy. You slept with the windows open because you did not have air-conditioning and considered yourself lucky if you had an attic fan. You would hear the night sounds as you lay in your bed. Sometimes you heard the people next doo. And some mornings you woke up and your bed was damp with the dew. Our lives were more interconnected back then with the people around us.

At night, people sat out on their front porch and talked. Many men were back from the war, but they did not talk much about it. They were happy to be home and their families were happy that they were home. They were the silent heroes, trying to put it all past them and move on into the lives that they had left behind. They talked of the future. It was a good time, a time to be thankful.

There were street lights, lightening bugs and you could hear your neigbors radio and TV. Neighbors might drop over and you would sit out in the yard and watch the stars come out. Sometimes there was iced tea, sometimes watermelon, but always good fellowship and friendship.

In Brokerbelle's home, they brought out the musical instruments and began to play until long after her brother, sister and herself went to bed. They could hear them signing with her father playing the mandolin, and other men playing the guitar and the banjo. Music was a part of your life. Not music of the streets, but music of the country. There was folk music and gospel music. And people sang along with the instruments. Later the singing would stop and people would hum or be silent.

Last night as we listened to the guitar, harmonicas and banjo, we heard the music and refrains of long ago, passing into the night like a lonely freight train passing from Missouri into Kansas long ago.

H.D.