Playing Grandpa. July 25, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

July 25, 2019

Playing Grandpa

My talents as a grandfather were severely tested last month when my seventeen-year old grandson Ian McCance visited me for two weeks. I had a wonderful time and hope that it was equally rewarding for him.

The primary reason for his visit was a week spent at Jazz Camp at Duquesne. Unlike me, Ian is a very competent musician, playing trumpet in both his high school band and their jazz band. He had a good experience at camp at Duquesne last year and was happy to have the opportunity to return this year.

This is a lot of fun for me, both vicariously and as a spectator. Although I love all types of music, I was never able to perform myself. My darkest day in junior high was the one in which Alma Weise ridiculed me for my inability to sing. Consequently I am impressed with anyone who can play an instrument. Ian no only plays well, but he appears to understand musical theory as well.

The collateral advantage of Jazz Camp is the fact that I was able to attend an hour-long jazz concert every day. The camp faculty performed at the end of the day for the first three days, demonstrating different concepts each day. For example, on Monday they concentrated on improvisation, with each of them playing improvised solos on well-known songs.

The seven faculty members together make up a jazz band that is easily the equivalent of any I have heard in my long career as a jazz fan. The camp director Mike Tomaro plays saxophone as well as he manages the camp. Jeff Bush on trombone and Joe Badaczewski complete the front line and are aptly supported by a rhythm section made up of Max Leake on piano, Eric Susoeff on guitar, Paul Thompson on bass, and Thomas Wendt on percussion.

Each of these men is a consummate professional; they are all performing regularly in local jazz venues, often as leaders of their own small groups. We were fortunate to have Jeff Bush put together a quartet to entertain at our retirement banquet last April.

 

Thursday afternoon the campers performed a concert in small groups, with each student coming up with his/her improvised solo. Friday they played as a large (twenty four piece) orchestra. I was quite impressed at their performance, an impression that has been reinforced by watching the video version that I recorded on my cell phone. I continue to be amazed at the accomplishments of young people today, especially as compared to what I recall from my youth days.

Ian will be a senior at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, this year, and is beginning to get serious about college next year. We described our campus visit to Penn State in an earlier column; it was followed by one at Pitt a week later. Unlike the very general one at Penn State, the Pitt tour focused on the School of Arts and Sciences. 

At this point Ian is contemplating majoring in history, a decision that I certainly would support. In an effort to gain a little bit of experience in that area, he spent his other week here as a pro-bono intern for the Bridgeville Area Historical Society. We want to transform the mass of information developed in our series of workshops on George Washington in western Pennsylvania into something accessible to the general public.

A possible candidate is a collection of short narrated video presentations, one for each of Washington’s seven visits here. Ian’s project is to produce this series of five or six minute videos; his progress to date has been impressive. The prototype is a video dedicated to the Fort Necessity campaign. In support of it we visited Jumonville Glen, Fort Necessity, and Braddock’s Grave. 

I am pleased with the tangible product of Ian’s efforts, something that is of value to the Society. I am much more pleased with the knowledge that he does indeed understand the subject matter and its significance to the history and heritage of this area. History may indeed be the appropriate niche for him. He attended the Historical Society’s program on the Bethel Brink’s Robbery and my brother’s talk on the local war dead and appeared to enjoy both of them.

Theater arts is another subject that Ian enjoys and at which he excels. Here too he is succeeding in an area in which I was a dismal failure. Despite my eloquent rendition of “Casey at the Bat” for my audition for the Dramatic Club in high school, my application was turned down. Even worse, based on my performance as Ogden McCloskey in our Junior Class play, Jane Patton was unable to find a role for me in our Senior play. In contrast, Ian has already performed in four or five community and school theatrical productions and is currently involved in a presentation of the play “Matilda”, based on the well-known novel by Roald Dahl. 

This provided me with an excuse to watch a few movies with him while he was here. We started out with “The Benny Goodman Story”, an appropriate supplement to Jazz Camp. Then three classic Westerns – “High Noon”, “Lonely Are the Brave”, and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, justified as examples of superb film-making.

We also watched the baseball fantasy movie, “The Natural”, as a complement to going to a Pirate game. The game we saw was close to being a fantasy; the Pirates beat San Diego 11 to 10 in eleven innings, incorporating three different comeback rallies en route to the victory. It certainly is difficult to beat the drama of a baseball game between two evenly matched teams.

Another highlight of his visit was our attending a live performance of “Oklahoma” at the Bendum Theater, accompanied by my daughter Elizabeth and grand-daughter Rachael. After seeing it I concluded that “Oklahoma” must be the greatest musical of all time. Ian and I also watched the movie version, with Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones; that did nothing to reduce my opinion of the show.

I am still not certain how a grandfather is expected to behave; both of my grandfathers had died before I was born. I suspect I attempt to overcompensate for this by being overly permissive. At any rate I enjoyed his visit immensely and hope it was equally enjoyable for him.