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Hi there...I have a few hours, before I head out for this evenings visitings...so where else should I spend it but right here...

I love that DaPatchy link...I have had that link for a while, and just love to listen to the tunes...they are all great...but my favorite jukebox, is the one with the gospel songs...Man, I just love that one...has lots of the old favorite hymns, and I really get so teary eyes , just listening to those old tunes...

I practically grew up in the Methodist Church....Mom was a Methodist, and took us kids before we could walk...the particular church we went to, had a lot of Norwegians, and being a 100% Norse gal, gravitated to them, because she was so thrilled to find a Methodist church, with many Norweigians, and so close to home...Many of those Norwegians people were actually from Norway, and I remember as a small girl, wondering why they were often speaking a foreign sounding language, and had accents when they spoke English...Mom, did not know, nor speak Norwegian...

Our minister and his wife, the choir director and his wife, our organist and her husband, the church caretaker and his wife, were all from Norway...It was wonderful growing up in that church...and Methodists can sing so loud, it brings the house down every Sunday...

Sunday School, church services, Bible Vacation School, Church pot luck dinner, church bake sales, church rummage sales,....all these were part and parcel of belonging to the church, and they were indeed wonderful events...full of people working together, loving each other, singing the Lords praises, and the older folk being role models for us kids, and keeping us in line when we needed it, and praising us when we deserved it...I loved those days, and many of these songs on DaPatchy remind me of those days...

As I grew up in the church, I began to take piano lessons, and my favorite songs to practice were hymns...Pretty soon I was getting pretty good, and was asked to be the new Sunday School pianist, as our other one was moving away to the suburbs, and so began my church piano playing days...Mom was the Superintendent of the Sunday School, and I was the pianist...keeping it in the family...

The church had a regular pianist and organist, but at every special service, like at Easter and Christmas, the minister always asked me to play a special little solo...I always enjoyed that, because, first, I was not nervous, because all the folks in the church were like my family, and secondly, I enjoyed playing the big Baby Grand Piano in the church...so I always enjoyed that...

After a few years, the organist moved, the church pianist became the organist, and I was asked to be the new church pianist...so I was playing for the Sunday School, and for the church, in duet along with the organ...

We played some mighty wonderful duets and hymns for many, many, years, and I just loved it...the sound of the old hymns and complicated duets, the sound of the congregation bellowing out the songs, is a very very dear memory for me...

In time, the organist got married, got pregnant, and she and her husband would be moving away...so I was asked to be the church organist...Now, I had never had an organ lesson in my life, so the organist gave me a crash course, on the stops and the pedals, on an organ...

It took a while,and great patience from the congregation, but at last I was pretty adept at playing the organ as well... I played for several years...

Then I got married, and my husband and I moved away from that area...so my organ days were over..my new local church already had an organist, and he was terrific, much better than I could ever hope to be...(He had his degree in music...I was just a person with a few years lessons, and a lot of self teaching)...

And so it was for many years...I no longer played in church and my husband and I could not afford a piano with our growing family, so playing the piano was just put on the back burner...

However, several years later, when we were now living near Ft. Bragg N.C., an opportunity presented itself...actually my young boy, was in Cub Scouts, and we were taking a couple of the dens over to an old peoples home, to sing Christmas carols...they music was supposed to be one of the den mothers, who was going to play the guitar for the kids to sing with...but she was in an accident on her way over to the nursing home, so we just figured that the kids could sing without aid of music...

But when we got to the nursing home, I saw that there was a piano...I asked someone at the nursing home, if they had a music book with Christmas music in it...As chance would have it they did...so I told the den mother, that if I could have a few minutes warmup to myself, I could probably play those tunes for the cub scouts...

And so I practised for a little while, and then I played for kids to sing...well, my son, could not believe the whole thing...because we did not have a piano at home...my old piano was still at my moms, and even tho we visited there often, I was usually occupied with keeping the kids in order, and did not bother with the piano..so my son was indeed quite flabbergasted to see his mom playing and playing quite well..it was an eye opener for him...

Later on in the week, the den mother asked me if I knew how to play the organ...I said yes,...she asked if I would be interested in playing for the small Methodist Church she attended...their organist had just gotten word of a military transfer, and would be leaving...

So, I said I would do it...but I needed a key to the church, as it had been a few years since I played, and really needed a few hours to just get back into the routine...

So she got me a key, and the Saturday, before I was supposed to start, I was going to go down to the church to practise...both my boys wanted to go with me, because they thought I was really making everything up, and that I really could not play the organ, ...they even brought along a few friends to see this...I could hear them all in the back of the car, whispering and laughing with one another, that Andys and Mike mom was trying to pull one over on them...they knew I could play the piano, because they had heard it with the cub scouts, but they were not buying into the fact that I could actually play good enough for a church organ...

So we got into the church, the kids all sat down quietly, and waited for what they thought would be a terrible sounding organ...what they got was a surprise...after all those years of not playing the organ, it all came back to me, just like that...I think its like riding a bicycle, once you know, you never forget...my boys and their friends were in shock...

But when we left the church after my practise, they were all patting me on the back and showering me with compliments...even my own two boys...I fooled all those kids good...

Well, there you are, another long winded story, brought on by the gospel tunes at DaPatchy...