I’m trying to learn to play David’s twenty eight dollar grade Martin HD28 a little better, that David gave me when he joined the Mennonites in search of the love of a Mennonite maiden who lived with her family near Fortuna, who milked her father’s cows.
When we played the nursing homes, one of our most requested songs was the Ballad of Forty Dollars, written by Tom T. Hall in 1968 and made famous by Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.
My mother sitting there in the crowd was so proud of me I thought she’d nearly bust but David’s mother would just sit there and sometimes she’d act like she was playing her piano, and we didn’t think she always recognized David.
When our mothers and those crowds were young forty dollars was two double eagles, two troy ounces of fine gold, and about the most anything sold for in the Sears or Montgomery Wards catalog.
David died, of a sudden onset of liver cancer, although he never drank a drop that me or anyone else ever saw him. I took my youngest son to David’s funeral, where I was pall bearer, and I had my son console the Mennonite girl, him telling her just what a wonderful man her David was.
And at David’s funeral near Fortuna that Mennonite choir performed better a cappella than anything David and me could imagine!
So I paused my practice on David’s Martin HD28, and searched for pipes on eBay over $39 and under $41.
And while I’ve never heard of a Bertram pipe my best pocket knife I’ve carried for maybe thirty years is a little Bertram, so I just splurged $39.95 on an old dented pipe I know nothing about.
Except I love the grain pattern on it.
I suppose I paid too much for my whistle, as my mother used to say.
But I’m sure my friends here can help me decipher all the marks on my $40 Bertram.
It’s only forty dollars, anyway.
But it’s worth it when I perform alone now for the nursing homes to own a good forty dollar pipe.
When we played the nursing homes, one of our most requested songs was the Ballad of Forty Dollars, written by Tom T. Hall in 1968 and made famous by Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.
My mother sitting there in the crowd was so proud of me I thought she’d nearly bust but David’s mother would just sit there and sometimes she’d act like she was playing her piano, and we didn’t think she always recognized David.
When our mothers and those crowds were young forty dollars was two double eagles, two troy ounces of fine gold, and about the most anything sold for in the Sears or Montgomery Wards catalog.
David died, of a sudden onset of liver cancer, although he never drank a drop that me or anyone else ever saw him. I took my youngest son to David’s funeral, where I was pall bearer, and I had my son console the Mennonite girl, him telling her just what a wonderful man her David was.
And at David’s funeral near Fortuna that Mennonite choir performed better a cappella than anything David and me could imagine!
So I paused my practice on David’s Martin HD28, and searched for pipes on eBay over $39 and under $41.
And while I’ve never heard of a Bertram pipe my best pocket knife I’ve carried for maybe thirty years is a little Bertram, so I just splurged $39.95 on an old dented pipe I know nothing about.
Except I love the grain pattern on it.
I suppose I paid too much for my whistle, as my mother used to say.
But I’m sure my friends here can help me decipher all the marks on my $40 Bertram.
It’s only forty dollars, anyway.
But it’s worth it when I perform alone now for the nursing homes to own a good forty dollar pipe.
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