Soccer Dad

The piano

My grandfather, "Zaydie" Morris Newman was a lawyer. Once he had a very grateful client who gave him a gift of a Steinway baby grand. The piano was in our family for many years. When we moved to Baltimore we got the piano. My father refinished it over many Sundays in our apartment.

When we moved to a house, the piano came with us. All of us learned to play the piano. I never was very good. I don't think any of us were ever as good as my mother. When she was younger she would get little busts of famous composers. (I never did much musically. My two brothers, though, each found instruments that they played with some level of skill. One played the accordion; the other drums.) I took guitar lessons for a year or two after piano, but was never very good at it.

In addition to law, my grandfather made an attempt to run for a local office in Worcester Massachusetts. I remember going house to house dropping leaflets under the door for him some forty years ago. He lost. Interestingly he was a Republican and distrustful of FDR. In 1944, my mother was embarrassed that hers was the only family supporting Dewey. But in retrospect she's impressed that her father sensed something about Roosevelt at the time that most other Jews didn't.

However, now my parents are preparing to move out of their house. Unfortunately, none of us has room for a baby grand. So this past Sunday she sold it to a man who refurbishes pianos. We'll miss it. The living room will look empty without it.

UPDATE: I'd like to add two things about Worcester.

First of all, when I was very young - and no I don't remember these incidents - when we visited I sometimes played with the grandchildren of my grandparents' friends. The grandparents watched these children because they're father ran into trouble with the law. In fact he was a fugitive. His name: Abbie Hoffman. Maybe that explains my radical politics these days. :-)

In January 1962, the state of Massachusetts had ten hearings on the state's Blue Laws. My grandfather argued against them at the hearing in Worcester. My mother still has the clipping. From what I've been able to uncover, the state's Blue Laws were ruled unconstitutional in 1959 by a federal court in a case called Gallagher vs. Crown Kosher Supermarket. In 1961 the Supreme Court ruled that the blue laws of Massachusetts were constitutional. My best guess is that once the judicial effort failed, those fighting the blue laws tried the legislative route.