Notes From My Knapsack 10-15-06
Jeff Gill

What Would You Carry Along?

Walking through the museums of Roscoe Village and Granville recently, a number of objects made me think about the hands that carried them.
For the first European pioneers into this area two hundred years ago and more, there were choices to be made. Whether in Conestoga wagons or earlier buckboards pulled by oxen across Raccoon Creek or the Tuscarawas River, there was only so much room, so many pounds that could go. A piano? Not likely. A millstone? Better find one there at the destination, but let’s bring the metal gears, and the steel tools to make an axle and belt system a millwheel could turn.
Wooden buckets could be assembled at the other end of the journey, but you may bring some iron bands to hammer around the oaken staves. A brass bucket? You could cook in it, carry water, or flip it over for a stool: throw it in the wagon.
Books? A Bible yes, novels maybe later. But a printing press to typeset a newspaper is tops on the order list when the cabins get set up.
Then there’s the bassoon. A bassoon? That went on the "can’t live without it" list? For someone in 1805, it came instead of a second jug of molasses or a spare wheel hub. A bassoon? What songs do you sing to a bassoon?
It turns out that in the days before organs, church music was usually – when it wasn’t a cappella, voice only – a violin, a viola, a trumpet for accents, and . . . a bassoon. Instead of the left hand on the piano, the "oompa-oompa-boom-pah" of a bassoon rhythm set the tempo.
Still, I wonder about the thoughts that led to that vital decision, a choice that couldn’t be reversed around Bedford, PA. "Music is important, I have a place in the worship service, and we might have a dance or two after the cornhusking, so I guess I’d better bring the bassoon." Did someone else say, "What on earth are you thinking? In the space that yard and a half of ebony and brass takes up you could carry the whole next winter’s worth of candles! We can wait a few years before we get a bassoon shipped over to us."
In 2006, with the days shorter and the trees turning, while the temperatures drop and even a few wisps of snow haunt the fringes of the sky, I think about being somewhere between the Ohio River at Fort Henry and the Pataskala valley, bumping along a blazed trail, marks in tree bark with horse-high hatchet chops all I have to see my path.
I think about the blankets and grain and preserves bundled up between my family members shivering in the back of the wagon, and then I remember my bassoon. Does that sign of civilization and culture warm my heart just a bit, or do I think: "Why didn’t I bring more socks?"
The presence of that bassoon here in Ohio, two centuries later, tells me that the place of music wasn’t just entertainment or diversion. It was life itself, along with matches and food and clay jars. They didn’t have CDs or iPods or radio stations to tune in, but their music was all the more important for how they made it themselves.
Give ear to that thought the next time you hear a tune you like, and imagine not only enjoying it, but being fed by it.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who is lucky to play the radio successfully; sing him your song of musical significance at knapsack77@gmail.com.