The Piccolo Wars

My Grandma Betty often said: "You get what you pay for. Always!" I didn't believe her, as I was growing up by hand, where we grew things from the dirt, and did great treasure hunting in thrift stores and through the "Atlanta Advertiser" (yesterday's answer to Craigslist). Everything I learned from my parents about surviving was earthy, frugal, resourceful. Grandma was the antithesis to this: elegant, exciting, cultured.  She had her hair "done" every Friday after work. There was a spare bedroom fully committed to some of her clothes (there were more in her regular bedroom) -- a walk-in closet full of shoes, another closet full of formals, and a big chest-of-drawers filled with her costume jewelry. She would let us girls dress up with her things, amazingly.  She was the exact opposite of my other Grandmother (MawMaw) - who was country to her core, could raise a heavenly garden and flowers, heck, she could put a stick in the ground and it would grow. I'm half MawMaw and half Grandma Betty, yielding a Yaya who is not Greek but behaves like one. There is nothing in the world like the love of a Grandmother -- if she's a good one, there's all this unconditional love, plenty of fun and wisdom, and lots of slackness when it comes to food or time constraints. I remember my two Grandmas looking deep into my eyes with that knowing bond of timeless love. I now do the same for my grandchildren. And the world keeps turning.

Back to the frugality of my childhood and early adult years...it is imprinted in my DNA that I must seek out the cheapest price on anything I am purchasing. I start there and work my way up (or perhaps abandon the whole idea, if need be). For this story, it all started with a little glimmer that existed in my lizard psyche, going way back to high school. I played flute in the band, but when we marched I borrowed and played one of the piccolos that were supplied by the school. It's pretty useless to play a flute out on a football field. You're dirtying up your instrument with extra grime and sweat for nothing, if you are a flutist. Nobody can hear you-- you're just a warm body in the scheme of things out there. Our band director tried to get me to play a fluglehorn during marching season, for heavens' sake. I'm still not certain what that is. I just know it resembled a trumpet and I was having no part of such strange contraptions. So the piccolo it was. I loved playing that little thing. It looked like a toy, kind-of sounded like a toy, and could rip a high B-flat like nobody's business, particularly in "Stars and Stripes Forever" -- which is, as our Maestro tells us, "the happiest tune ever written." I've always secretly wanted one, all these decades of continuing to play my flute. I even rented one once, for a church cantata. It seems so decadent, so indulgent, to own something that I know for a fact I will only play once in awhile (for various marches, patriotic days, and particularly the Stars & Stripes). We already have a wonderful piccolo player in our wind ensemble -- we don't need another one. But I kept chewing on that bone, for years. 

When my tax lady told me that I was actually, miraculously, getting a refund this year instead of having to pay the IRS, my brain fixated on the idea, since we're going to Italy in June to play four concerts. I mean, we're playing That Aforementioned Song, which begs for as many piccolos as you can muster. And I'm probably never going to Italy again. I decided to live a little and started scouring Facebook marketplace and second-hand shops for a used piccolo. I impulsively drove to downtown Atlanta one afternoon with three grandchildren in tow, bought a crappy old piccolo and immediately regretted it. I mean, when my car rounded the corner from picking it up, I almost called the fellow right then with buyer's remorse. When I found out (hindsight) how much it would cost to make the thing playable, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But it was cheap! 

Sometimes there is grace, in the land of the living. The nice man met up with me a few days later and gave me my money back. I drove straight to Ken Stanton Music (well, after stopping by the bank, there's that...), the same place my parents bought my first flute some 50 years ago. I played four of their piccolos and slapped that cash right down on the counter for the one that sounded the best. Forget frugality, forget cheap, forget buying anything used. I bought a spankin' new piccolo and even bought the maintenance agreement. I can see my Daddy up in heaven, laughing up a storm. Now that he's up there with Jesus, he has to know that sometimes, Grandma Betty is right.