2 posts tagged “nostalgia”
I was saddened to see the news this week of the passing of Roberta Brown. Ms. Brown, a resident of our community since 1956, was the music teacher at Starkey Elementary School when I was a student there.
While the world of elementary education has changed significantly since those days, the idea that young students should be exposed to music, art, and physical education has remained constant. Ms. Brown was our guide to music, and she was a good guide.
I didn’t realize until reading her obituary Thursday that she was a fellow Longhorn with a degree in harp. Harp: I never would have imagined it. I suppose we waves of schoolchildren were her primary instrument all of those years – we were a slightly off-tuned harp.
Here are some of the things I remember from Ms. Brown’s classes:
I remember her wheeling in a phonograph on a cart and playing different types of music for us. No one liked the opera she played for us, but we did enjoy the narrated “Peter and the Wolf” each year. She also brought recordings of music from around the world.
She was also responsible, in those Norman Rockwell days, for producing school pageants. I have very distinct memories of two of those performances.
In one we sang several selections in Japanese. Well, it was a version of Japanese tinged with both a Texas drawl and a complete incomprehension of Japanese. We practiced for months, making these odd sounds, warbling in a tongue no one could understand. It only occurs to me now that Ms. Brown probably didn’t understand Japanese, either.
On the big night we sang our little Japanese hearts out, and our parents applauded in English. I’m guessing the point of the exercise was to focus on the sounds we were making instead of the words we were saying. Regardless, it’s a lesson I still remember some forty years later.
The other memory is more personal: In class one day she asked who among us students could play the piano. I raised my hand, though in truth I had only just started lessons. I could play the piano about as well as I could play the bassoon.
I found myself assigned a piece to play for the Starkey Christmas Pageant, “Silent Night.”
I looked at the music she handed me. It was like nothing I’d ever played before: it required both hands. At the same time. And each hand was expected to play several notes. At the same time. But even worse, each hand was to play something different from the other hand. Again, at the same time. It was like trying to tie two different knots separately with each hand.
I was terrified. My teacher, too, was not pleased. But Ms. Brown, like another Ms. Brown, was unsinkable. She insisted that I play that piece in that night in front of a huge crowd. “Of course you can play it,” she told me.
And so my piano teacher began some intense training.
Leonard Bernstein once quipped that to accomplish the impossible all that is required is a plan and not enough time to accomplish the plan. Somehow, by the night of the musical, I could play “Silent Night.” I’m sure I stuttered along on the old upright piano, but I did make it through the piece while the audience sang along in the in the school cafeteria.
And yes, Gentle Reader, I can play “Silent Night” to this day. The lesson burned into my head those weeks is still there, the notes are still upon the tips of my fingers, ready to march out, in sequence, upon command.
Roberta Brown was a good teacher, and she gave life to a difficult subject. Music is, after all, a fleeting art. It lives on the edge of a knife, as the sound we hear passes quickly into memory. It is art in a series of moments. Ms. Brown helped us explore those moments and in doing so taught lessons that do not fade.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native and a Starkey Scorpion.
My first memory of Bill Dozier, the former owner of the Kerrville Daily Times who passed away this week, is of him at his office on Earl Garrett Street, when the Daily Times used to be housed in what is now called the Downtown Executive Center. That building, in the 300 block of Earl Garrett, faced the courthouse. You entered by glass doors opening to a long counter. Behind the counter was a jumble of desks with a few offices in the rear of a large room the printing equipment was beyond those offices in the back of the room. I seem to remember Kit West there, a former section editor, who was our neighbor. I also remember the desks were as messy as my own is today.
It was a busy place, the old Kerrville Daily Times. Everything seemed to be happening in that old big room. My memories of Bill Dozier there are of a kind and patient person who seemed to have time even for youngsters like me.
Around the corner, on Water Street, between the Arcadia Theater and the Heritage Star, in the area now housing the safety deposit boxes for Bank of America, was the office of the other newspaper, the Kerrville Mountain Sun. I remember this office, too, for its several linotype machines, big noisy contraptions that struck type in hot lead. Walking into the Mountain Sun offices was a little more risky; I don’t remember a counter. When you walked into the office you found desks to your left, and there in front of you were those belching linotype machines.
I know it’s a cliché, but things were a lot simpler then. Everyone knew your name, and everyone spoke to you on the sidewalk. (It was harder to get into mischief when most of the town would report your behavior to your parents before you had a chance to return to the print shop.)
Everything was within walking distance of our print shop: the post office was on the corner, First National Bank and Charles Schreiner Bank were just down Water Street. Speaking of Charles Schreiner Bank, I’m old enough to remember passing the old brass plaque by the door which said “Charles Schreiner Banker, Unincorporated,” and seeing Louis Schreiner, Charles Schreiner’s son, at his desk near the front door. There was also a large scale in the bank we’d always jump on to see how much we weighed.
Earl Garrett Street offered two men’s stores, Water Street had three pharmacies, Penny’s, Lehmann’s (later Winn’s) and Schreiner’s offered a wide variety of goods. The eight-story Bluebonnet Hotel towered above everything, City Hall and the County Courthouse were nearby, there were dry cleaners, a locker plant, three car dealerships (Peterson’s, Stoepel’s, and Reiter’s) nearby. There were two movie theaters, the Arcadia and the Rialto, though I don’t remember the Rialto showing movies then. There were a bevy of women’s clothing stores, and at least one children’s clothes store, Ken and Mary’s. There were two shoe stores, the Booterie (where Francisco’s Restaurant is today), and Ware’s, which was near the Arcadia. Ware’s had this electronic gadget you could put your foot in and it would tell you your size, showing the size on a screen with lit numerals. It was extremely cool.
I say all this to show how different Kerrville was when Bill and Eleanor Dozier came to Kerrville in the early 1960s after buying the Kerrville Daily Times.
In those days, too, publishers and editors were on virtually every committee in town, along with the bankers, hospital and school administrators. Mrs. W. A. Salter, publisher of the Kerrville Mountain Sun, was tireless in her efforts on behalf of Kerrville, and so were the Doziers. They worked hard to make Kerrville a better place and I think all can agree our community is better for their efforts.
I’ll miss Bill Dozier. He was always kind in his remarks about this column, and once praised an April Fool’s Day column as an elaborate fib which fooled even him.
The last time I ever saw Bill Dozier was in his office on Jefferson street, about a stone’s throw from the place where I’d first seen him. He was packing up his office, closing it down. There, amid the boxes and numerous plaques stacked against the wall, I found a smiling man, still patient, still with enough time enough for youngsters like me.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who has very fond memories of the Kerrville of his childhood.
