It was tough being the child of an overachieving sportsman when your sporting genes seemed to have gone missing. No hand eye coordination, no unusual stamina or long power, perhaps a total absence of ‘quick fire’ muscle. As the son of a man who was 6’4”, who had reached 6’ by the ripe old age of 14 Devon felt short all his life. He had a very fascinating internal world going on inside his head at all times and even eating tended to get in the way of his enjoyment of that, so he had never been a big eater. Devon was the small guy in every group of California school kids he was ever part of. He knew he was loved by his Mom and Dad but he also knew how much he disappointed his Dad. His Opa, Carl Senior, did not give him much respite either. The first question out of Opa’s mouth on his frequent visits up from retirement in San Diego was wanting to know how his current sport activity was going. At Elementary school the teachers worked out that Devon had a pretty severe case of short sightedness, probably by his inability to answer any question involving the blackboard but exceling at every question involving the textbooks. Devon had not wanted to make a fuss and the general fuzziness of life was not something he found unpleasant. Even with his newfound 3D detailed vision he was still uncoordinated, and he valued his new glasses and the various sporting efforts his Dad and Opa encouraged seemed more likely to damage them.
They were patient in their group exploration of the limits of Devon’s sporting prowess, they tried every possible sport to see whether something odd like horseshoes, which his Dad also excelled in, was the sporting vein of gold. T-ball, Pop Warner Football, Soccer, Baseball again just in case in the 2 years since he sucked at T-ball he had grown Ted Williams-like resolve, Volleyball, Ice Skating in the hope that maybe Ice Hockey would then naturally follow and Soccer, just one more time. Devon actually enjoyed soccer more than the other forms of torture in so far as the field was pretty large and he could amble around in a space on his own, exploring the grass below his feet or imagining the insects weaving their way in the turf. The general noise from the shoutingly encouraging parental scrum could be tuned out and he got a medal at the end of the short season, although the award was just for participation, he still carried it home with much pride.
His Dad was stoic if somewhat disappointed as his goal was for Devon to have the same fun that he had growing up but their obvious differences in both stature and coordination and general sportiness grew more apparent as Devon grew, or didn’t grow as Carl had hoped. He made one last effort with swimming. Their home was in a development with a shared sports club including a pool and a swim team. Devon could swim enough to save his life in case in some throwback to his grandfather he was ever torpedoed but he enjoyed the pool more for the coolness of the water in the East Bay heat of summer. He loved nothing more than to close his eyes, sink to the bottom and imagine an undersea world of quiet bliss while bubbles slalomed to the surface barely disturbing his private sensory deprivation. Swim team was a different world, his Dad would gamely drag him out of bed at 6.00 am 5 days a week and with his coffee mug in his hand walk a shivering, stumbling son across to the swim club then returned home to read his paper and get breakfast. Meanwhile Devon would be forced into the endless repetition of swimming up and down his lane with the kids slightly younger but the same size as him for an hour. Devon had real trouble seeing much without his glasses, so he often ploughed straight into the end wall of the pool if he was pushed to do practice races. After 6 weeks of this daily auto-da-fé the first swim meet of the year duly arrived against several local swim clubs including the home club of the famous Spitz of Olympic hero status. Carl was new to this ritual but approached it with excitement, to share with Devon in a sporting moment of reward for his hard work and diligent effort. The Saturday duly arrived and they were there early at 7.30 am with all the other willing and game parents. They checked out the race schedule and Devon had a 50m free stroke, Boys Under 9 race at 11.20 on Sunday and a Boys Under 9 free style 50 m relay at 3.50 that Saturday afternoon. They watched and cheered gamely as race after race of splashing children were roared on by the partisan parents, they ate the doughnuts, they chatted or at least Carl chatted with the other parents while Devon rested his head, his cap on his head ready to go, on his drawn up knees and swam off into his private world of imagination. They got hot dogs at lunch and soda and applied some more sunscreen. Devon’s Mom and his sister Melissa came for lunch, then went home but promised to come back for his race. Finally, as the sun started to be shuttered by the stands of Eucalyptus trees around the swim club the Under 9’s Boys’ Freestyle race ticked around on the card, a mere 20 minutes later than planned. Devon and the other Under 9s stood on the starting boxes and awaited the starting horn; swaying ready, set and off they raced. Boys that age are not exactly cutting sharply through the water, it’s more of an egg-beater meandering gamely up the lanes, the turns are not slick tumbles and Devon had not actually mastered the tumble turn. He swam until he crashed into the end wall then turned around and went back the other way. It was game, it was tiring and even with all the Newgarden family cheers of support Devon came in 8 of 8 and half a length behind the winning boy from Alamo, who they noticed, when they got out of the pool, nearly a foot taller than Devon.
They gave him lots of support and ice-cream for desert that evening and Devon went to bed relatively early, exhausted from the weight of the expectations if not the physical exercise. Sunday morning was bright and his Dad was right there at 7.00 to get him up and breakfasted ready for his next race. Carl understood the parental code of everyone being there all day and supporting every swimmer on the team, not just your own kids so they were there at 8.00am with everyone else in time for the first races. Devon’s relay race did not go any better, in fact it was worse as their team were in the lead after the first 2 swimmers before Devon hit the water and for all of his brave egg-beating frenzy he came in last of the 3rd swimmers and his team finished 7th. There was only so much Devon would be able to do and his Dad understood that, he finally conceded that maybe sports were not his thing and he was honest enough to himself to realize that he had no stomach for sacrificing complete weekends to watch other people’s kids swim up and down. They talked it over on the way home and his Dad and he agreed that maybe swim team was not his bag, so when he got home Devon had a big smile across his face.
Carrie Newgarden was a happy upbeat woman, a believer in the power of positive thinking and keen on developing various skills while being very content with her role as a full time Mom. She would drive the kids around from one activity to another and they would all sing along to the pop music on the radio in the station wagon. The kids both loved to sing, and she noticed Devon only had to hear a song once and he knew the melody cold and most if not all the words, as she would hear him later in his bedroom singing to himself. With Carl’s sporting obsession now well and truly lanced for Devon if not for Melissa she wondered if maybe Devon would like to develop his musical knowledge, perhaps that was where his talents were?
One of the women, Cathy Lee, she played doubles with at the tennis club, was the wife of one of the local OBGYNs, her and her husband were originally from Hong Kong. She described how she was making both her kids play piano as part of a general learning discipline. With her desire to give Devon a musical outlet she asked Cathy where her kids got their lessons and Cathy gave her the number of a Mrs. McAlister. She warned her that Mrs. M was a disciplinarian, a follower of some slightly nutty version of Christianity but a reliable and well-trained teacher, with a Master’s in Music Theory. She gave lessons from her home up the road in Concord, the slightly down at heel dormitory town for the industrial chemical complex on the Delta at Martinez and home to an under-publicized storage facility for the Navy’s nuclear weaponry.
Carrie took Devon to meet Mrs. McAlister the following week after a short phone introduction. The house was quite pristine in a mixed neighborhood of ranch style homes on large lots. There seemed to be a bit of a menagerie in the back yard but the zoning in Concord allowed the keeping of animals for domestic consumption, something Pleasant Hill specifically restricted. From Cathy Lee’s description of Maggie McAlister Carrie had some trepidation and expected to find a dour version of Church Lady, all twinsets, pearls and bibles. However, both she and Devon were welcomed by a pretty, smiley woman in her 40’s and her house and music room were tidy and quietly focused on all things musical; scales and keyboards abounded. Tea and cookies, home baked and healthy, were presented while she asked Devon about his musical attainment. When she discovered this was virgin territory, she was encouraged rather than the opposite, She was keen to start the transition of Devon from a non-piano playing member of humanity to one of the keyboard cognoscenti. Devon spent 2 hours a week in that house every week for the next four years, holidays and high days excluded. He progressed fast and practiced at home on the first of several electronic keyboards that he was bought, they were not as good as a piano but it gave him something to work with. He enjoyed the discipline of the practice and learned to read music quickly. As his skill grew Maggie stretched him and had him perform more and more complex pieces. She staged a twice-yearly performance where her student performed in the garden for the gathered parents. The kids changed constantly over those four years as many get burnt out with the mindless repetitive practice of a music they have little affinity for, but Devon became a dependable presence and over time a standout performer. By the time he was pushing 12 Maggie thought he needed someone who would be able to take him to the next level and so suggested to Devons’ Mom that she would recommend him to David Keppler who had a studio and classroom in Lafayette, and a real concert grand for Devon to work with.
Devon duly said goodbye to the McAlister music room and backyard menagerie, the handwritten signs and acronyms for scales, the smell of home baking and the sweet smell of cinnamon in Maggie’s frequent herbal teas. His dad was happy Devon had found something to occupy his time with and had started, belatedly, to coach his sister Melissa in softball, so he in many ways lost touch with Devon. They lived in the same house but occupied different worlds. Carl rose early to drive into San Francisco and traveled a lot and when he was home, he was watching sports or coaching the girls. Devon scrambled out of bed at the last possible opportunity to grab a pop tart on the way out of the door to go to school. Every afternoon he wrapped his homework around the 2 hours a day of practice on his new keyboard while wearing headphones in his room, the sound of the clacking keys becoming an ever-present ambient sound in the Newgarden home. He folded his life around the 2 lessons a week with the serious Mr Keppler. Mr Keppler spoke at a level barely above a whisper. He hinted, harrassed and guided his students relentlessly but always quietly. Picking up their errors, not as they occurred but in review after a piece was finished, going through every slip, fumble or gaff in precise order so the student had not only the false sense of success but then the arduous task of remembering when and how each slip, fumble or gaff had occurred so they could avoid the same fate next time. Devon bent his nature to the will of Mr Keppler, he concentrated and he avoided the screw ups. The progress was not celebrated with cups of herbal tea or cookies. It was celebrated with “Mmm, better, better.” The one glimpse of creativity that had been glimpsed in his first few months in Keppler’s wooden hall of a studio was not the Bösendorfer in its shiny black gilt-edged grandeur but the rows of serious looking electronic keyboards around the walls. Keppler kept him playing the standard practice fodder of Debussy, Bach and Mozart as that was needed to be mastered for the various levels of qualified success that charts the pianist’s life. However, towards the end of the second year of working together Keppler introduced the occasional jazz standard with the excuse that, as much as it was not performance music it introduced a new technique or time signature for Devon to master.
Carrie was proud of her son in the same way that Carl would have been if he had been an All-Star, hitting home runs. There was less to show off about it with family and friends but it pleased her to see Devon so obviously happy. For his 14th birthday she thought it was time to get him a real piano at home, not a grand piano as they didn’t really have the room but an upright. She talked to Carl and he was supportive, he was doing well at work and getting a good bonus that January so she went to see Keppler to ask his advice. She explained what she wanted to do for Devon and he sighed, put his chin on his finger in a slightly camp way and said he would think it through and talk to some people, and get back to her. He called back later that week and said if she was serious about buying him a piano she should understand that for it to have the proper effect on his practice it should have a full size action and keys, that generally means a ‘professional’ upright. They are $6,000 to $25,000 normally. At which point Carrie nearly fainted as in 1990 this was the price range for a small family car. But before she could try to tiptoe her way out of the conversation Keppler said that he had a former student, Donald Judd, who had been very successful in getting a new sponsorship from Yamaha and been given a new baby grand only 1 year after buying a really good professional Weber upright. Keppler had persuaded him of Devon’s need, and he was happy to let it go to a good home on his recommendation for $3500 and so he had agreed on her behalf that it was a bargain too good to miss so they should arrange to pick it up this Saturday. Carrie mumbled her thanks and scrambled to find a pen to write down the address in Piedmont and wondered how to break the news to Carl.
Carl was actually pretty relaxed about the price which was a pleasant surprise, but he was never cheap and respected good equipment, whether for golf or skiing so his son having a good piano made sense. He called in the help of a couple of the younger stronger guys who worked for him to pick the piano up, rented a U-Haul with a loading ramp, padded blankets and lashing ropes and with Carrie leading the way in her Toyota the convoyed through the hills of Oakland to Judd’s house. The young man met them at the door and lead them to the garage where the piano was standing in the shadows, next to an unused Weber kettle barbeque. Carl could not resist the crack about this was a lot of money to be paying for a Weber and made as if to take the BBQ. Judd didn’t seem to get it. The driveway was a square of typical red bricks so the piano wobbled its way down the drive, and the 3 guys heaved and hoed and the piano was padded and restrained and the door slammed shut.
Back home in Pleasant Hill they released it from its temporary restraining order and using the U-Haul ramp got it up and into the Newgarden’s house. Beers were drunk in celebration of the day’s hard work and the guys from work, Wriggles and Leach, headed off to enjoy the rest of their Saturday and Carrie set about to work out how to hide a large piano to maintain the birthday surprise. Her solution was to find a camping tarpaulin and cover the ebony and then layer various camping items on and in front of it. When Devon came home from piano lesson later, he walked straight by the mess in the den and into the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out some cheese sticks and went upstairs to his room. The elaborate cover story of looking after a neighbor’s camping equipment during a garage floor sealing exercise stayed in her pocket.
Monday rolled around and Devon’s birthday dawned and for once his Dad woke him up with a mug of coffee. “I’m heading out of town to Chicago for 3 days but wanted to have a birthday celebration with you before you go off to school, get dressed and let’s get a real breakfast all together, your Mom’s doing pancakes!” Devon duly showered, threw on some clothes and arrived down in the kitchen for his birthday breakfast to be greeted with a rousing, if off-tune, rendition of Happy Birthday from his sister and parents. They slathered the pancakes with syrup and as it was his birthday he got to have cream whip on them as well. When that was done they all looked at him as if he was supposed to do something but then broke the ice by saying we have something for you in the Den and proceeded to blind fold him and led him through to the other room where the scarf covering his eyes was removed to the cries of “Surprise!!”and in front of him was the shiny patina of a seriously big upright piano. Devon was a boy of few words and was even more lost at the surprise, but he managed to hug his Mom, then his Dad, then Melissa and mumble thanks, thanks, its awesome. He then asked whether they got a piano stool for him, which of course they had not so they got his desk stool from his bedroom and he duly started to play to hear and feel how it played and he fell in love with it, and cried and mumbled thanks guys over and over. Carl went off to Chicago, Melissa went off to middle school, Carrie to clear up the pancake mess and Devon never forgot that morning.
Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy 