I have two cheap harmonicas. A little one I inherited from my father, and a newer chromatic one. Every time I tried to learn to play I got lightheaded and dizzy after a while. It's great how it works for you, just the opposite it seems. I must be doing it wrong. Would you consider posting a picture of all your harmonicas. I'd like to see them. Maybe you have already and I missed it.
@Shirley Martin Lordy, mercy, what can I say that would interest a pretty lady like yourself. Let me say first I always watch the storms as they approach your part of North Carolina and wonder how you fared and how life is down on the farm. I expect you're a busy lady still with all you have to do with keeping up with family and running a household still. Not that you can't handle things, I know you can for you are a strong southern lady and get things done. Me, I've been something of a weakling lately, thinking a couple of times that copd had claimed me, I would be so short of breath and it seemed another was not there. But I recouped and remember you have had and cared for someone in the same shape. I've been debating where I should try to get hearing aids fixed or maybe buy a new one. I've got so much hanging on my ears now I can't keep up with it all. I was late for an appointment with my hearing aid specialist this afternoon. My son was giving me a ride and he thought the app't was at 1:30 and it was for 1:00. When we didn't show, he was feeling ill so when we didn't show, he went home. Re-made an appointment for next week. My youngest grandson graduates Oklahoma University this coming weekend. Monday, he, his mom and sister are driving to Madison, Wisconsin where University of Wisconsin has awarded him a very nice scholarship to attend graduate school there. I won't attend his graduation but will gift him a small amount of money to help get him started so he'll have a little change in his pocket. Sorry, wish I had something interesting to talk about but nothing here but the same old six and seven. Wishing you the best and hoping good things come your way. So, with that said, you have a good one, what's left of it.
There now, that's much better. I know you must be so proud of your grandson. I don't know anything about hearing aids except that my brother once had one that he paid a lot of money for. He said it didn't help a bit. He wanted to send it back but they wouldn't take it and refund his money. He sent it anyway along with a note filled with choice words. I believe he told them where they could stick them. My brother was quite something. Keep taking one breath behind another. Breath in ...... breath out... I've been fishing for the last several weekends. The weather has been great and the fish are biting pretty good. Do you have any stories about fishing? Fiction or real... I once wrote one about my fictional cousins, Cousin LeeRoy and his brother BillyBob. Them boys could screw up a straight line.
Sorry, almost forgot. All I need is a chromatic. Mine was an old one and got to sticking a bit and I threw it away some months ago. I give them all a work out weekly. That keeps us both in shape.
That's a lot of harmonicas. I've never seen one like that fat one (on top of the box). But then I haven't seen many harmonicas, ever. Thanks, Bill.
@Nancy Hart Same photos but different views. These are my main stays. I have a few others in Minor keys. They come in handy for songs like Riders In The Sky. Nothing special. There are some new one on the market I'd like to try, a half a dozen, maybe, but that gets expensive. The big one is an Echo Harmonica.It has tewo sets of two sets of reeds set just a little apart so when played well they echo or they can give a slow mournful feeling to a song. Mickey Raphael is the only player I know who uses them regularly. Check him out on line sometime when you have nothing else to do. He got a gig witn Willy Nelson some foxy tthree years ago and didn't play country and didn't like country. He help me get started back when. We emailed each other for several months, just to shoot the breeze. He thought it interesting I was playing harp to breathe better.
I've posted this before elsewhere but a question above reminded me of this poem or if you will a piece of prose. I wrote it as an assignment or maybe from a prompt. Here it is again. We Might Have Been Friends I wish we had time, you and I to sit down and talk a spell about life and experience, good times and bad and the road we took getting here to this place. We’d talk about your country and mine, the things we like, about food and wine. talk about family and large dinners, It was things like that that molded us, gave us character, carried us through the hard times, like sickness and accidents, wars and loneliness, how we like the same things. It would’ve been good, we'd agreed to have known each other over the long haul, maybe as neighbors how we could’ve aided each other, gossiped together, helped out in times of sickness, and how we'd agree each in his own way, agreed silently, we liked each other, and puzzled to ourselves what might have been had we met earlier. We stand up. I say its been wonderful seeing you, getting to know you a bit. You say, Yes, its been a fine time we’ve had, so nice to sit and talk, get to know each other. We say goodbye and I walk to my car, thinking, a fine lady. I wish I could take her with me. You turn back to your loneliness, I drive back to mine.
I just listened to several videos of Mickey Raphael, but he wasn't playing an echo harp. He was supposed to be playing it in the song Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain with Willie Nelson, but Willie didn't let him play enough to even hear it. So I found an amateur, just to get an idea of the sound. LINK Thanks, Bill
Sorry. The only way to know he is playing the ehco is to listen. He keeps it covered up. Willy wants no one playing over him, and You're most welcome.
Sometimes I post things I wish I hadn't. Maybe a little self gradification or perhaps faulty judgement. the only remedy I can think of is to try to do better. OK, I will try to do better. Really, Seriously. A couple of notes about the slow decline of this living, breathing oldster.. I noticed maybe for the second or third time this morning when I awoke and sat up on the side of the bed I was light headed. Before it has been when I stood up. Now it is happening when I sit up. When I stood and was light headed and it would mot go away, I started using a wheel chair more often. One comment about the wheelchair I nave noticed and that is I am skinning up some doors and door facings in trying to maneuver about the house while learning to use the wheelchair. Not hard but no easy task either. I haven't fallen much but I don't want to fall so I'm using the chair more and maybe witnessing the slow decline of one oldster. It is 8:15 and I'm still in bed, writing on this small, first edition, mini-iPad with one finger.. No use getting up and sitting in the chill of a heatless house. If I did get up ealier all I'd be doing is sitting in the office with the door shut blowing as quitely as possible on a harmonica or doing this very same thing on a desktop . I need yo call the insurance adjuster. Tell him I have singificant damage to the roof, some vents' a couple of broken windows anf three or four screens over my storm windows. What does a roof job cost now days? Five or six thousand bucks? That 's when you notice that high deductible that have ade your insurance payments a little lower. Life in the slow lane. Funny how one's mind can wonder. had to sit up again to cough up some phalm. Still light headed. Right leg beginning to cramp. Ump, oh. I know it's not that cold. 52 or 54 outside. Maybe 68 inside. Guess my blood is thin or crawling out from under a sheet and warm comforter makes it seem colder. But I'm thinking of coffee, coffee a little on the strong side. Still it can be nice being a little lazy, lying in, enjoying the comforts of modern living, whatever that is. But I've got things to do, places to go, people to see, as the saying goes. Gotta hit the deck.