PROSE

Excerpt from my second book, Singing My Way Home: More Stories and Songs

• King of Song
• Little Black Dog
• A Very Special Birthday Present

KING OF SONG

After the house fire, I spent the night with some friends who invited me to a dinner they were giving that night. It turns out that this was an on-going event for them. Every Thursday night they hosted a pot luck with the meal centering around a pot of homemade beans, hence the name Bean Night. They invited me to the next one, and the next one. I went despite lingering feelings of being an outsider and not belonging.. One of the regulars, Bob Berryman, would reach out to me in a way that often dissolved my fearful feelings.

When I arrived, he'd exclaim, "Evie Barton!!" and give me one of his beautiful smiles, exuding warmth and acceptance. With that act, he somehow made it ok for me to be there.

Bob and Mark were best friends, and constantly joshed with each other, often pulling off hilarious antics that left the rest of us with stitches in our sides from laughing.

They also planned on opening a restaurant and acoustic music venue together.

In addition to having a huge heart with a welcoming persona, Bob was also a talented singer, guitarist, and one hell of a chef. He loved to cook, and over the years, had worked at some of the best restaurants in the area.

He had a voice that was as big and resonant as his heart, and he loved to sing, especially Irish tunes. In fact, he had had taken 2nd place in an Irish music festival in Cincinnati, and was supposed to go to Ireland to for the next step in the competition, but he didn't have the money for the trip.

Bob also loved my music, and encouraged me to put it out in the world. I asked him to back me on guitar and vocals, along with another member of Bean Night, Steve, who in addition to being a fine photographer, also was bass player. Both of them said yes, and I arranged for our first rehearsal, a Friday evening, in mid-September of 2004. First I would make dinner for them, and then we would rehearse.

That afternoon the contractors installed our new stove in the kitchen. In doing so, some of the gas escaped from the valve; I was upstairs, when suddenly a wave of nauseau came over me, along with heart attack symptoms. I tried to get through it by myself, planning to continue with my schedule for the day, but by the time my first student and his mother arrived, I knew I needed help. I asked them to take me to ER at a nearby hospital, which they did. Before leaving the house, I posted a note on the door for Bob and Steve, telling them that I was going to ER. I also apologized for not having dinner ready for them.

At ER, I was given oxygen, first one tank, and then another. Gradually I began to feel better. After about 2 hours, I was moved from the triage unit to a private room. Shortly thereafter, I heard someone knock on the door, and, to my utter astonishment, in strode Bob and Steve!

"How did you get in?" I asked.
"Told 'em we were family" came the reply from Bob.

That touched me deeply, and I realized that my feelings about not belonging to Bean Night were just that, feelings. Reality spoke otherwise.

Bob sat down on a chair in the corner of the room, and began singing in that great big voice of his.

Part of me was utterly delighted and entranced, by this private performance of Irish tunes and I felt that I was the most fortunate, blessed person in the world. Another part of me, however, was aware that I was wearing only a hospital gown and was terrified that the nurses would come and throw me out on the street as is.

They didn't even come to say,"Hey , knock it off in there!" Once again, my fears were needless.

Over the course of my visit with Bob and Steve, I remembered that a singer-songwriter friend of mine from Chicago, Susan Urban, would be performing at a local coffeehouse that night along with her singing partner, Sandy. They were supposed to spend the night at our house afterwards. That would be a problem, because at that point, I already knew that I was going to be kept overnight at the hospital. David was also giving a concert of his own that night, and wouldn't even be home by the time they arrived.

I explained the situation to Bob, who said,"No problem. I have an extra room with a double bed in it. In fact, I just made it up fresh today. They can stay at my house."

So he and Steve went to the coffeehouse, connected with Susan and Sandy, and my friends stayed at his house that night.

At the following Bean Night, Bob gave me more of the details. "I went up to Susan at intermission and said, 'I really like your music…wanna stay at my house tonight?!'"

She was taken aback, of course, and stammered, "Uh, no….thanks, we have a place to stay," to which he replied, "No you don't, Evie's in the hospital!"

He laughed when he told me that, saying, "That's when Susan Susan really freaked out!"

She and Sandy hit it off with Bob, trading songs and talking until 3 am in the morning. That would be the only time they would ever spend together.

Bob was very overweight, and knew he had a heart condition. On Wednesday, December 28, 2004, he drove himself to Fort Wayne to the VA hospital where he had an appointment to get himself checked out. He was given a stress test, with no one in the room monitoring it. When the staff came back in the room, they found Bob dead. They tried in vain to revive him.

To say that all of us "Beaners" were devastated is an understatement. We got the news late that night, and couldn't comprehend it at first. It was a total shock. How could someone who was so full of life vanish instantly? It didn't seem possible. It didn't seem real."

The day after Bob died, I went over to his mother's house with another friend from Bean Night. Bob's mother, an elderly woman, let us in, sat down, and simply said, "I've lost my son."

After that we went to see Mark, each of us rushing up to hold him, in long, silent , bear hugs. Our grief was palpable, throbbing, painful, enormous.

It also was Thursday, Bean Night, and I was afraid that if we didn't have Bean Night that night, we never would have it again. At first Mark decided to cancel it. He just was not up to hosting it. But late that afternoon he changed his mind. One of the Bean Night group made the dishes that he normally prepared, and the rest of us each brought our usual offerings of food, homemade wine, and liquors.

I also brought white votive candles, setting them on the dinner table and lighting one for each person, visible and invisible. We put out a place-setting for Bob, and continued to do that for quite awhile.

His memorial service was on January 1, 2005. I awoke early that morning to the most beautiful, unusual sight. It was dawn, the sun not risen yet, but it's coming light illuminated the clouds. Only they weren't ordinary clouds. Among them there was a perfect rose-colored ring glimmering in the sky, with two more partial ones behind it. I had never seen anything like that before and I haven't since.

I rushed to the phone, and called Mark, exclaiming, "I saw Bob's halo!" After I described the cloud formation, Mark corrected me and said, "That wasn't a halo. Those were smoke rings! Bob loved to blow smoke rings!" He had sent me smoke rings from Heaven.

The memorial service was bittersweet. At the funeral home, his son and daughter gave every visitor one of Bob's beloved Hawaiian shirts to wear during the service. Those of us who had actually played music with him were allowed to keep ours. So, on that cold, frosty New Year's Day, we not only said good-bye to Bob and but also hello to the New Year clad in his Hawaiian shirts.

The local Irish music scene was there in full force, with superb musicians playing and singing Bob's favorite Irish tunes, with all of us singing along on some of them, including "Mulligans's Wake" In that song, Mulligan, has fallen off a ladder, is taken for dead, and comes to during the ensuing drunken brawl at his wake. I kept waiting for Bob to do as Mulligan did which is to jump out of his coffin, exclaiming, "Jesus Christ, do you think I'm dead???"

Bob didn't do that.

Following the memorial service we all went to a local Irish restaurant-bar-music venue, where the owners were throwing Bob a true Irish wake for Bob, serving an Irish feast using Bob's recipes. We sang for Bob, we cried for Bob.

As time progressed, I tried to be a comfort to those closest to Bob, to help them through their grief. After my initial pain subsided, I began to feel numb, and that disturbed me greatly. Finally, a couple of months later, I sat at the piano, began playing, and the following song came through me. As it did, I began to feel the largeness of my grief. It came surging up from the depths of my being to the surface, where it emerged with tears and music.

KING OF SONG

You sang so strong,
You live on in our songs.
You were so kind
You live on in our minds.

You will never die
Not as long as we can sing
You will always be
Shining in our memory.

King of Song
King of Song
Carry on,
Carry on!

You gave joy to
All those lucky to know you
You made us laugh
You lived what really mattered

You will never die
Not as long as we can sing
You will always be
Shining in our memory.

King of Song
King of Song
Carry on,
Carry on!

Now I seek to honor
What you have given
I vow to love, to laugh
Freely and often.

You will never die
Not as long as we can sing
You will always be
Shining in our memory.

King of Song
King of Song
Carry on,
Carry on!

You sang so strong,
You live on in our songs
You sang so strong
You live on in our songs
On in our songs
On in our songs
On in our songs.

©2011, Evelyne B. Barton

back to top

LITTLE BLACK DOG

"Until one has loved an animal, part of their soul remains unawakened." 

When we came to this country, we left behind all the family we had ever know, or rather, all the family that my parents had ever known. Their brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces lived in Germany, and we lived in France so I hadn't met them yet. My sister did on a one-week trip to Berlin when she was about 2 years old.

But it turns out that we had family in this country, family that we not only had we not met yet, but amily that we didn't even know that we had for sure, and if it hadn't been for my mother's perseverance, we would have never found them.

Her mother had corresponded for years with a cousin, who was the descendant of a German immigrant who had come to the US in the 1850's. He, and then his children, and their children, had stayed in touch with their family in Germany, even though they never met. My maternal grandmother had written back and forth to a cousin in Indiana for years until WW II interrupted their correspondence. My grandmother died during the war, so the letters never resumed.

My mother recalled that the family name was Schellart, so when we moved to this country, she sent letters to all of the Schellars she could find. Some people responded with a,"Sorry, that's not us," and others didn't write back at all. I think she sent out 50 letters.

Finally she received a positive response, from a gentleman near Dunkirk, Indiana. So, when we were moving from Joliet, Illinois, to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1955, we took a little bit of a southern detour to go to Dunkirk, near Muncie, Indiana. We found the man who had responded to us, and he in turn sent us to his cousin, Beth Schellart Frank. We showed up unannounced, a foreign couple with 2 little girls, and a Crown Imperial Chrysler loaded up to the windows with luggage, a cat, and a bird cage 2 canaries fluttering around in it.

My mother explained who we were, and Aunt Beth went back into her house, returning with a letter that she showed to my mother. My mother screamed. Her mother, who had died years earlier, had penned this letter to Aunt Beth, and it was as if a little piece of my mother's heart was restored to her, a small victory over the death that had separated my mother from her mother.

Aunt Beth no longer was Beth Schellart Frank to us. She immediately became "Aunt Beth" for the rest of her life.

Aunt Beth had several brothers and sisters all of who, were intensely devoted to each other: Uncle Joe, Uncle Bob, Uncle Ralph, and Aunt Ruth, all of whom lived in Dunkirk except for but Aunt Ruth who lived in Nevada. Uncle Joe came over every single morning to have coffee with Aunt Beth and it was during one of these coffee mornings that he once told me about his first impressions of us. "We really weren't sure what to make of you all when you showed up. But then Aunt Beth came out of the house, carrying a letter to her mother, from your grandmother. When your mother saw it, she started screaming, so we realized you were all the real deal."

It was their first contact with any relations from over seas, ever. And it didn't matter how distantly we were related; once they figured out that we were indeed related, we were immediate family as far as they were concerned, and it stayed that way for the rest of their lives.

They became central to our lives; we took them into our hearts as unreservedly as they did us, and these simple, straight forward, and I might add very liberal and Democrat country folk were just what we needed. We would go visit them 2 or 3 times a year, and they would come visit us there. Suddenly, I did have aunts and uncles and some cousins, though not living close by enough to have the same sort of impact that an extended family would have had. Nonetheless, it helped.

When my parents decided to take a trip back to Europe in 1961, they invited along Aunt Beth, who probably would have never gone to Europe otherwise. My sister and I were
excited to have her come along with us at first, but as she often shared a room with us, towards the end of the trip that got old for all of us. We couldn't wait NOT to have Aunt Beth around, and I found out years later, that the feeling had been mutual. Fortunately, those feelings went away rather quickly on both sides.

In 1970, my parents moved to California, so they didn't get to see the family in Dunkirk asf often, but they stayed in touch with them. When David and I graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1974, we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had been hired to teach at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, CCM, a college within the University of Cincinnati. Now we were only a few hours away from Dunkirk and we made frequent trips to go see Aunt Beth.

Two years later, when David took another position at Indiana University, South Bend, we were still close enough to make regular visits and we did.

I loved Aunt Beth dearly, and felt totally accepted by her, which wasn't always the case with my own mother. Aunt Beth was always cheerful, even though she had gone through devastatingly hard times. She smiled, chuckled, and laughed constantly, and was a giving, generous, and hard-working person. At age 87, she still lived alone on her farm, and cultivated a truck garden.

In March of 1988, Uncle Joe died suddenly and simultaneously, I came down with adult chicken pox at the same time. running the highest fever I had ever had in my life. I was bedridden for a week, and was very upset that I couldn't go to Uncle Joe's funeral.

When I was better, one of the first things I did was to go visit Aunt Beth and I stayed for 3 days. Aunt Beth had an adorable new puppy named Sam, and I took a picture of thme together before I left.

During that visit she took out a pile of negatives from a drawer in the kitchen table, ones that she didn't have pictures of, only the negatives, and she gave them to me so that I could have them printed up. We went through the whole drawer, finding all sorts of thins, including her diary from her trip to Europe with us in 1961. We both laughed out loud at her exasperated writings about my sister and me. "Oh, my," she laughed, "You and your sister were horrible, such brats on the trip!" I think we teased her unmercifully because, among other things, she could never say "Switzerland", calling it "Switcherland" instead, which drove both my sister and me batty. And much as she loved that country, she was adamant that she would never live there because women didn't have the vote!

A couple of days after my visit with Aunt Beth, I got some awful news. Sam had run out into the street, was hit by a car and died instantly. Aunt Beth picked him up, stumbled into her garden sobbing, and had a stroke. The death of Uncle Joe, and now Sam was too much for her. Neighbors found her there later, incoherent, still holding Sam. She did survive the stroke, but she would never return to her home of over 50 years.

Aunt Beth had one daughter, Virginia, and the 2 of them were as different as could be from each other, but they also were very close. So, when Aunt Beth was able to leave the hospital,
Virginia decided that Aunt Beth would come to live with her, and that's what she did, spending the remainder of her life with her daughter and son-in-law, Clarence.

Aunt Beth was a simple country woman, with a simple house, clean, but simple. Virginia was the opposite. She had sophisticated tastes, which were reflected in her elegant home,as well as in her 2 dogs, poodles, who went to the groomers each week for a bath and new ribbons in their fur.

While Aunt Beth was in the hospital, I came to visit as often as I could, both to see Aunt Beth, and also to be helpful to Virginia, who now had the task of deciding what to do with not only Aunt Beth's house and her belongings, but also her pets. There were 3, a little black dog named Tiny, who was already 12 years old, and 2 cats named Dolly and Max.

On one of my visits, we went over to Aunt Beth's house, and her next door neighbors came over to talk about Tiny's fate. They had been feeding him everyday, and felt he was lost without Aunt Beth. "We really think you should put him down," they told her, "That would be the kindest thing to do." Virginia concurred.

I was appalled, thinking to myself that that wasn't the kindest thing to do, it was the easiest thing to do. For some reason, and I don't know why, Virginia was not going to take Tiny to her home.

I appealed to her. "Please, just give me two weeks to find him a home." She agreed. I asked David if we could keep Tiny for 2 weeks, until I found him another home. David wasn't happy about this and begrudgingly agreed to it, so on our next trip to Dunkirk, we brought home Tiny. And we also brought home Dolly who was renamed Lady Sarah because of her regal manner.

Tiny and I bonded, so I didn't work too hard at finding him a new home. Tiny stayed with us, living out the rest of his life with us, which turned out to be two and a half more years. In fact, David felt that Tiny and I were closer to each other than Tiny had been to Aunt Beth.

I began taking walks with Tiny. Children stopped to pet him. So did adults. In subtle but profound ways, Tiny changed my life.

One night when I came from home from work, and I was depresse, feeling rather sorry for myself, and I don't even recall why. But I do remember becoming aware of this small bundle of affection sitting on my bed next to me, waiting for me to stop being self-absorbed , waiting for me to reach out to him. I did. I also reached for my guitar, and wrote the following song for him right then and there, with him by my side.

LITTLE BLACK DOG

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Do you know how you changed my life?
Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Do you know what you've done?

I used to stay inside my house and
Never take a walk,
I used to keep all to myself and
Never stop to talk.

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Do you know what happened?
You and Aunt Beth lived on a farm
Until she had a stroke.

The neighbors said
"Let's put you to sleep"
And I said, "Let's not.
Just give me a week to
Find him a home,
My own."

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Two months, you were alone,
You didn't know where Aunt Beth went
You knew no one was home.

Until I came to bring you here
For just a week or two
That week turned into a year
That year became two.

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Do you know what happened?
You took me for a walk one day
And I just kept on walking.

The kids all stopped to play with you
Grownups said,"Hello."
My daily walks brought me new friends,
My new friends brought me more.

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Did I ever tell you,
I didn't know your specialness
When I first came for you

But now I know your soul is great
And your expectations small.
You wear a smile in your eyes
That says it all.

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
Wouldn't life be simpler
If all people were like you,
Content and open?

All you want is love,
And a nice walk now and then,
You take each moment as it comes,
And you let it go again.

Little black dog sitting on my bed,
This song is for you.
You gave me more than I can say,
You gave me love that's true.

All I know is music,
So this I give to you,
A song to sing forever,
That says "I love you, too."

©1990, Evelyne B. Barton

back to top

A VERY SPECIAL BIRTHDAY PRESENT

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm crazy over the Beatles, and that Paul is my favorite Beatle, which is not to say that I don't love the others. I do, but I have to admit that Paul has always been my heartthrob.

On my 50th birthday, I went to the vet to pick up some medication for my dog, Puma I. On my way home, I stopped at one of my favorite junk stores, the Classic Boutique. It is stuffed with old and not-so-old furniture, books, china, knick knacks, and so on. I found a beautiful old stuffed animal, a dog, cocker spaniel, I think, with long floppy ears. There was a knob in its belly, which made me think that there was a music box in it.

When I got home, I turned the knob, and discovered that it was a radio, not a music box. And, to my utter astonishment, and delight, there was Paul McCartney singing "If I fell", which is one of my all-time favorite songs.

The next song was Barbra Streisand singing, "People who need People." I turned off the radio after that one, as I didn't want an unwanted melody intruding on the specialness of that moment.

What are the odds of being unexpectedly serenaded by one of my favorite singers of all time? That made my day, as well as the fact that while I was at the vet, I got to hold the biggest cat I had ever seen, a large orange tabby who weighed 32 lbs. In Japan, big fat cats are symbols of abundance and prosperity.
I certainly was blessed with some very good omens at the beginning of my new decade.

Unfortunately, the stuffed dog, radio and all, did not survive the fire we had 2 and a half years later. But the memory, and the happiness that it brought me still does.

©2010, Evelyne B. Barton

back to top