POP DUO One of the celebrated Wright Brothers, of Dayton,Ohio - I think it must have been Orville, decided he was destined to do something a bit more distinctive than running a bicycle repair shop. He decided he wanted to learn to play the mandolin.
Part of that desire might well have been due to the fact that his brother Wilbur was already puffing out tunes on harmonica which they called a "mouth-organ. " The instruments seem to have suited their individual personalities. Wilbur choose a reed instrument - everything precut and fashioned and one had only to learn to regulate the proper flow of air over, upon and below the reed surfaces to bring forth a beautiful flight of melody. It is easy enough for us to imagine Wilbur experimenting with with several old tunes and tinkering with the tones until the sound were fashioned into recognizable songs.
My maternal Grandfather John Loeffort was, at about that same time playing what was really a larger harmonica placed in a box with bellows between to button-studded keyboard clusters. In that day it was called "Meloldian". He bought it in Butler, Pa ; he played it a number of sites in Ohio and a summer camp at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It was made in Italy, a "Paolo Soprani, Castelfidardo, Italia". It is a kin to the concertina and even more closely to the small push-pull boxes you see and hear only in Cajun bands down New Orlan's way today. The melodian was the predecessor of the "Button" accordion which was supplanted by the piano key accordion starting in the 1920's.
Orville preferred mandolin with its double-strings to be tuned up and down, the pegs to adjust, frets to follow with studied care, musical chords which worked all sorts wonders when properly manipulated. His mandolin was the same as one played by Ida Amanda Lenz who was one-third of the "Lenz Sisters" singers, in ,Ohio. The according Granddaddy played is beside me in it's original nail-studded wooden case but Grandmother's old "egg-[shell" mandolin is long gone. The Sister trio sang and played at church socials and civic gatherings in the Ohio area just south of Sandusky. While visiting relatives in an adjoining county, it so happened that John met Ida they were married. They moved - mandolin and melodian - to Aspenwald, PA and then, later, with their two children, to Norfolk, Va.
It often strikes me as odd that I associate the famed Wright Brothers with music. Their sister Katherine wrote of her unpleasant times when Orville was taking mandolin lessons. "He sits around and picks that thing until I can hardly stay in the house!" She said her brothers practiced mainly "to get even" with neighbors who had practiced piano for years.
It's good to know the Wright Brothers were very much like the rest of us. And, largely because of the musical background - however trivial - I have always felt a kinship I could never have known in any other way. Lean back in that easy chair of yours and think about flying for a moment. Isn't there a moment of melody in your swift movement across the vast expanse of an unclouded sky?
A.L.M . March 14, 2005 [c550wds]
