I said, “No, Grandma. I haven’t played the viola in years.” It was early April 2005, I was at home and she had called to check on me as I recovered from tailbone surgery. After she seemed satisfied she’d done her duty, she transitioned to reporting on her own health complaints. As she talked, my mind wandered to all the other instruments I’d always wanted to play, the guitar, maybe the drums. Then to instruments I never knew I wanted to play like the hammered dulcimer or the harp. I imagined myself as a busker playing hurdy gurdy on a street corner, or in the subway for other people to discover the enchanting drone. When I got off the phone, I started scouring eBay for accordions.
I marveled at the selection of accordions on the Internet. Did I want a piano keyboard with three octaves or five? Did I want a “concertina” which looked to me like something a pirate would play? My eyes hurt just looking at the diatonic accordions, with their buttons on both sides instead of a keyboard. I settled on a “student” accordion.
When it arrived, I realized I had no idea how to get the damn thing to make a sound. My research results for teachers were few, I decided to call the closer of the two. An stern woman with a thick Italian accent answered the phone and when I asked to speak to Sam Franco she put down the receiver without telling me to wait. “Hiloo? Sam Franco” answered the man who identified himself as the proprietor of the Italian Accordion Studio. He had a sing song voice and when I asked about lessons, he made it seem like this was an unusual request. He thought for a moment and after making sure I had a piano accordion told me to come by next Wednesday at 11am. I spent the week with a “what have I done” feeling and hesitantly schleped my new acquired accordion to my first lesson.
Wednesday came around and I showed up to the the address totally weirded out to to find that the Italian Accordion Studio was not a storefront business, but instead a yellow brick house. The woman I spoke to on the phone answered the door in a pink floral housedress and a terry cloth robe, the spitting image Sofia from Golden Girls. She chastised me for coming to the front door and with both hands she shooed me away as if I was a dirty dog to the side of the house. Sam met me at the side door. He had a full head of fluffy white hair, a Jimmy Durante nose, and eyes that squinted to see me. I followed him into the wood paneled basement where he asked to see the accordion.
When I opened the case, he sucked air through his teeth and in a thick South Side accent said “Ack. This is isn’t an accordion. What is this?” He tried to play the accordion, but it wheezed like a punctured lung.
“Step into my office, let’s take a look at this thing,” said Sam. He spread a pink towel across the washer and dryer and placed the accordion on top. He extracted a multitool from the pocket of his pleated khakis and began the autopsy. With a pen light in one hand, he pointed at different parts of the instrument with an awl diagnosing it all as no good. I shrugged.
After half an hour of this I felt more like a little kid at her first karate lesson itchy to break boards with her face. I didn’t come here to look at rusty metal filaments, I came to shred. I was about to tell him I had to leave when he shuffled away and returned with a full sized cream-colored accordion with gold keys. My jaw dropped.
“I’ll tell you what if you take lessons with me you can borrow it. Try it out, and if you like it I’ll sell it to you for a good price.” I was in.
Week after a week, I showed up on Wednesdays at 11 for lessons. I came to know the woman who shooed me away from the front door as Sam’s wife Rose, who turned out to be kind and delighted in offering me all varieties cookies and sodas before and after my lessons. I also became fond of the basement which was cluttered with a rainbow of loaner accordions, homemade guitars, and crazy-faced wooden statues Sam had carved. On the walls there were posters of accordion greats like Frankie Yankovic and Gus Viseur, as well as old photos of Sam performing. Some Wednesdays I could smell Rose baking anise biscotti upstairs and she would bring me an overflowing bag. Other Wednesdays there were surprises like a plastic bucket of floating gherkins which I would bravely accept a taste of. Even though I paid him twenty dollars a week to teach me songs and music theory, he spent most of the hour telling me about growing up on Taylor Street, playing in jazz clubs, and how he allegedly invented the electric guitar. I was a captivated audience.
After a few months of lessons with Sam, the accordion has started feel as natural as playing the viola. Sam looked proud when I nailed Take Me Out to the Ball Game and Lady of Spain, and seemed equally impressed when I came in having learned the theme to Amelie on my own. He liked the tune, but was unfamiliar with the film, asking “ Who’s Amy Lee?”
Once in the middle of my rendition of Dark Eyes, he answered a call from a student canceling their lesson. Sam put down the receiver and sighed. He launched into a frustrated explanation about the health care system and how he relied on the music lessons to pay for supplemental health insurance.
"It will be hard for you too when you’re eighty-six and social security doesn’t cut it and your goddamn kids don’t help out.” He sat stewing quietly for a few moments, then looked up and asked me if I was interested one of the harmonicas he just got in. I nodded and tried to forget the three times I cancelled my lesson because I wanted to go to the beach instead or just lazily hadn’t taken the time to practice. My attendance never faltered after that.
Eventually I had to go back to college full time and that meant having to leave the accordion lessons behind. I had developed a decent repertoire of songs and even though I wasn’t busking for dollars outside the Metro, I was grateful for those Wednesdays. I thanked Sam profusely, and he laughed it off, telling me to stay in school and not get married too young. I let Rose give me extra Chips Ahoy and a root beer for the road. I hugged them feeling as if they were the grandparents I never had, even though my own grandparents are still alive. I promised I would be back for lessons when I had the time. But I never made the time. I never went back and I still feel guilty about it. That being said, these days when my grandmother pauses long enough in her monologues about her own life long enough to ask if I still play accordion, I say yes.