AlbuQ
I was walking along Central Avenue and came across a weathered busker playing a fiddle, dropped a buck into his case and listened to a traditional tune. He looked strong, lean with big rugged hands like a stone sculptor and fingers that seemed way too large for the small neck of the fiddle. But, his fingers were agile, somewhat acrobatic, not missing a note. He played to me, as I listened with sincerity and pleasure. His name was Bill., said he lives up there in the mountain… pointing east. “I do jobs for friends and make fiddles“.. he said, while being apologetic about the colour stain experiment on his fiddle. His sincerity made it all a work of art. “My name is Rod…. Rod” I repeated, as I shook his hand. “I’ll try to remember” he said “But I have CRS” “What”, I asked. “CRS… can’t remember shit!” I laughed with him, as I had not heard that expression before. But, its been around, I was told. My ABQ cousin uses it.
Tomorrow, after 13 days, I leave AlbuQ. They say ABQ around here but, I kind-a like AlbuQ. I leave with some feelings of ambivalence, as my dear Auntie, who was in the hospital when I arrived, got out and had to go back again yesterday. First, a car accident (broken bones, vertebrate, chest) then gallbladder removal, then a herniated intestine operation and extended complications with that, which were starving her to death. So she is back in again , for another intervention to dilate the intestine. But, through it all her sense of humour has not waned, nor has her wit and bold determination. She will make it.
Look at her, with that nose tube she calls her “elephant trunk” playing my banjitar in her hospital bed…and experimenting with a digital piano on her notebook… absolutely…Irrepressible, at 85 yrs…
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I am glad I have her blood in my veins (from her mother, my grandmother)). She is an inspiration for me… another heroine in the revolution of life.
My Grandmother, Nellie, 1926 … another heroine
Seems like my “heroes” in life are firstly “heroines” in a mans‘ war, where men are self named “heroes“!. She is truly and factually, the reason why I am here in AlbuQ, on this mythical, magical, fantastical journey, that started fours years earlier, with a Facebook note from a first cousin I had never even known about. She and I are, along with her sister, equally enthusiastic on a “digging up Nellie” mission. It is fascinating… like shrouded in a misty, foggy clandestine night of secrecy and gossip… about a woman who gave birth to nine children with two different husbands, in two different countries and was interred, at 38, in an anonymous grave, Lot 225, in foreign soil.
Nellie… born in Malay Falls, Nova Scotia 1895 and had 11 siblings, grew up in a rough mosquito, black fly infested forest, where bear fat was your fly dope, where too many men cursed, fought each other with knives, where asses were kicked out the doors, family or not and they drank home brew to kill the pain, with stupefied laughter, where the women were mere kitchen baby staff.
Nellie, we called her, had six kids before she was 22... Born to a trapper, guide, bear, moose, caribou hunter, fishermen, river driver and story teller family. She probably rolled a few logs herself and was a bit of a revolutionary and adventurer. All her stories will never be told... went to the grave... many of them. She left the sticky, stinky, sticks, kids and all and not by choice and went to the USA 1924 and became a lady of class, with fancy hats to raise another family…a poignant Kafka-like story… where for some reason “did she-was she’ secrets continue to frack through the old soil of Malay Falls and across the border. There is a song to come... maybe in a rich Delta Blues genre. I just got a new (Dobro) guitar with a seductive, spoky sound.... goina' see what comes around and why her ass was kicked out the door… was she too much rebel, too much feminine sass… too much class? We have a lot of diggin’ to do under that grassy grave in Connecticut.
The first task in our mission is to get her a headstone, with her name proudly and properly chiselled into it, below a Mayflower, that is intrinsic to the coat of arms of her native Nova Scotia. Then we are going to dig her up... her story is out there in memories, letters, statistics and the growing curiosity of her descendants, spread around the continent of America.
Tomorrow, I leave AlbuQ, with a new passion, with a copied file of Aunt Carrie's letters and photos on Nellie. It is exciting, as I sent the news out to a few cousins on the Eastern seaboard who want to join the mission, to see the letters and photos and hear my story of Nellie, as she (my grandmother) and I were born from the same geographic soil. I can feel her pulse.
I am inspired to expand my musical knowledge from the confine of three strumming chords to the picking fluidity of the Delta Blues and to write Nellie's song on my new Guitar... a work of art.
It is at is a "limited-release Gretsch 9202 Honey Dipper Special... round-neck resonator guitar, with all the same features as the wildly popular G9201 Honey Dipper Special, with the addition of aged white fingerboard binding, screened headstockgraphic and a weathered "Delta Blue" finish ,, with the
This guitar is far, far above my class. I have to forcefully supress the terror it brings to me. But, when I hold that solid brass acoustic body against me and strum it... the vibrations resonate right through to my back bone, into my entire body, as sound resonates into one ears. It seduces me. Today, I bought a blues lesson CD. The challenge is in my hands.
I may have to call her Honey Dipper or Blue Nellie! Whataya think?
Okay, I am heading out to Galveston to do as I promised in a previous blog... to photograph that magnificent statue of the "heroines" of the Texas revolution and to learn their story in the forming and shaping of the United States of America ?
I'll be right back .
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