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Sent: Mon 8/17/2009 8:51 PM

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Subject: Fiddle-Faddle "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/15/AR2009081502584.html"

Chance reading of this item has set me once again upon the "reminiscences trail" - and so you shall more ramblings from the Far Side here...

 

ONCE, when I still lived back in Norwalk, CT - my first wife, Jean, and I went to a big fair and tag sale kind of thing down at Calf Pasture Park, I think it was.  Wandering around midst the booths, I spotted an old fiddle for sale.  Since I once harbored vague "dreams" of learning to play same, I picked it up and idly examined it.  Guy only wanted something like $5 for it - so I bought it.  When I got home I was cleaning it up a bit when I spotted a very old, parchmenty slip of paper glued to inside of the instrument... it seemed to have some very old, faint handwriting on it.  I held it up to light and could just make out the writing (you guessed it! LOL)... it said "....Stradivarius!"  

Holy Gee!  Of all the luck!  Wow!  I might not ever win the Lottery... but here I had gone and bought a genuine Stradivarius violin for $5 at a tag sale!  How ya gonna' miss?  

So next day I got on horn and called Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and asked if they had a violin specialist on staff whatever and could he look at this fiddle for me?  Gal asked a few questions and then she said, very unlikely is true Stradivarius, but then again it MIGHT be so Yes! - bring your fiddle on in and we will look at it.  So I drove down to New York and showed it to the "experts."  I had to wait in a waiting room - they would not let me be part of their "exam" or conference - but it didn't take too long - and the spokesman came out and returned the fiddle and said, "We are quite sure this is not a true Stradivarius.  But then again one never knows..."  Real noncommittal sort of thing - maybe... but again ...maybe not.   

Couple days later, I was still in (mild anyway) shock and friend dropped around.  He was okay guy but kind of pain in the you know what. Always out of a job and felt world owed him a living.  And felt it was World's loss - not his - that "he" had not been discovered and offered a top slot somewhere doing something (anything)!  LOL... you know the type,  I am sure.   And he was always kind of "resentful"  over the fact that I "got paid money" for ... just writing and stories and articles and "things" - and my PR accounts and promotion projects and all (at this time I had graduated to my own bizz and worked out of my house - which also further irritated him...).  He was kind of a weasel guy and took umbrage at fact that I maintained "writing" (broadly conceived, that is) is a skill some learn and some don't - and them as does - can go on and use it to earn their bread, etc. where others use their skills at "numbers" same way, and wind up working on Wall Street ...while still others perfect their "the Arts of Chicanery," as it were,  and wind up selling used cars (LOL!) or maybe also on Wall Street, too... (Grin again!) - and some - it is true - have nothing but strong backs and weak minds and we generally know them as field archaeologists... (Just pulling your collective chains here, my shovelbum buddies!  Not to get all riled now....).  

Anyhow, he always said that "writing" (like "speaking") was something EVERYONE knew how to do... and that for me to claim or maintain I could do it "better" - was preposterous and all same thing as saying like someone could "breathe" better than next guy or whatever - since we ALL speak and write at one time or another....LOL  

So, anyhow, we got to talking and he got all worked up about the Stradivarius - and said such a thing would be "big news" throughout the world if true, etc. etc. - and kind of challenged me "so why didn't I 'write' something and 'tell' the world about it, etc. etc.... sort of smart-ass-like and got me riled some so I said "Why, Bob - that would be easiest thing to do - all I got to do is lift the phone here..."  His doubt was getting to me... so I did.  I picked up the phone I mean...  

Called the old "Norwalk Hour" I did.  Asked for "Desk".  Put right through.  Guy came on... "Rewrite!"  I said "Got hot one here - local papers please copy..."  Click clilck clack clack - I could here him typing in headers... "Shoot!"....  So I shot ... Local citizen.  Me in fact.  Picked up Stradivarious at the current Tag Sale in Park, etc. etc.  

"Got it!" says Rewrite.  "A.M./ edition."  Then he was gone.  

I said to Bob:  "Watch the "Hour" tomorrow, Bob.  You will see...  And now I got work to do" - and turned to my desk.  

Next day - true to "Rewrite's" promise - we made the form: Front page human interest item: local citizen finds valuable Stradivarius at Calf Pasture Fair.  

Etc. etc.  

Now if that were all there was to story - that would be that.  You know - as they say in the Fourth Estate (rather write in Fourth Estate) at bottom of last page:   "30".  Over and out.  

But this story wasn't...  Not by long shot...!!!!
 

Because along about this time, "USA Today" was just getting organized... and every morning some service had been leaving a copy, gratis, at end of my driveway.  So next morning I strolled out to get the papers, etc. - and picked up this strange new newspaper being handed out free in its early days... and first thing I saw was an AP News Wire lead, datelined Norwalk, CT - and it was all about this guy that  had made this find of a rare violin at an antiques fair, etc. etc.  (Ohmigawd, I thought: the AP stringers have picked up this story from yesterday's Hour and now...!)  

What a circus!  First, I got a call that very morning from an old friend I had not heard from for years - a onetime dig associate - who had moved all unbeknownst to me to Miami way down in Florida.  And he was congratulating me on my find - as reported in the Miami papers that day, etc. etc.!  LOL!  Then the "offers to buy" came streaming in.  From all over the country. The phone began to ring off wall as people all over Nation read this small item in their papers and got hold of me.  Jean was running ragged answering the phone.  (Bob alleged it was all "a trick" and I was not letting him in on it...LOL.  I said the trick is knowing how to write and disseminate interesting stuff, Bob... We parted not long after - not the best of pals...).  

Then came Causey.  I'm tempted to say his name was Billie-Bob Causey - or something like that.  Causey lived in the Louisiana Bayou country and he said he was a reknowned Cajun fiddler and he "had" to have my fiddle.  I told him it was not really a Stradivarius I was pretty sure - but he would not be put off.  In conversation I learned he was a trapper down that way - and one thing led to another and I told him of my oldtime outdoor life interests and the mountain men, etc. - and he wanted to know where I got my "skins."  (I told him of all the prime racoon peltries I had taken to make my Woodsman's outfit, etc.)  He told me how he trapped out in the bayou's from his pirogue and all.  So I then told him that I didn't really shoot or set traps for my 'coons: I lived right near a major highway up here in the Northeast - the old Merritt Parkway to be exact (some recipients here will know it) - and that what I did was get up early in the mornings and then go out and walk a stretch of this highway behind my house and there would be prime dead 'coons lying dead by the wayside -  hit during the night when they were prowling about.  I told him I distinguished what I called "squashers" and "bumpers": squashers being 'coons run over flat and squashed and not for the taking (obviously), but there were many "bumpers" - often without a mark on them! - and I would take these up and skin them and tack 'em to my barn and (later) tan them in battery acid and salt, etc. etc.  No messing with setting traps - poling through the swamps, etc. or any of that stuff.  

Causey went bonkers!  Said he was going to come up and visit me (Oh, Jeezul!) - and would it be okay if he brought his (small) family and all - they could sleep in back of truck, whatever - and further he wanted in on this kind of a deal for taking 'coons so easy and all.  Along about now I began to chicken out - and duck his calls: he took to calling around daybreak - and when Jean would answer he told her he was bigtime Cajun Cook, too - and would take over all the cooking for us during his (indeteriminate !) stay, etc. etc.  Well, I forget just how I discouraged him in the end, but I finally managed to back-peddle out of that impending disaster - to be greeted by another!  

This was some fantastically rich Texas rancher (or so he said) who had seen the newspaper story somewhere and he wanted me to know that he was the King of Gospel singing and playing down that way - and he "had to have" my fiddle!  In no time at all, this dude replaced old Causey on the phone line and he went on to send me some documentation of some kind on who and what he was (he really was a reknowned rich guy with Gospel group that played the circuits down Texas way) and moreover he was really into fiddles.  In fact, he had once gone to Italy on a trip and had bought an entire Medieval period fiddle maker's workshop, dismantled it, and sent it back to Texas and reconstructed same on his ranch down there.  

So he began to pester the hell out of me night and day to "c'mon down" or name my price and sell him the fiddle, etc. etc.  

So, now I began to wonder anew: Do I really have something here or not?  So I did some more snooping around and found out about a guy who lived  further upstate from me who was considered the fiddle-maker's fiddle-maker.  I think he lived in Litchfield County - somewhere up that way.  And his name was... Powell (!).  So one day Jean and I took the fiddle and went up to meet this guy Powell.  He kinda lived off the beaten track in old farmhouse... alone... and man! did he know his fiddles!  He ate, breathed and slept fiddles!  He was in fact, the only fiddle guy in Western Hemisphere who had the official stamp of approval to work on real (verified) Stradivarii - several of which were owned by musicians in the New York Philharmonic and other Symphonies.  He introduced me to the whole subject.  He was in fact, well-known to all the Metropolitan Museum folk I had seen earlier and all lover the place, besides.   Fascinating.  He knew his Cremonas, his Guarnierie's, and anything about anything that had to do with violins.  In fact he had one there at that time he was fixing some way - a Cremona (?) I think - something - and he let us see it and his whole workshop,etc etc.   

And then he told me about my Stradivarius.  It was not one.  Period.  But what he explained was very interesting: years ago, violin makers turning out "cheap" violins for the general market, would often (as a promotional device) glue little strips of paper inside the cases - just like mine - as sort of advertising gimmick and all.  Actually, he said it was more "innocent" than that: some of the oldtime fiddles did actually incorporate various design features (curves, thin walls, whatever) like the originals had - and when they turned out a line of such fiddles, the oldtime fiddle makers would glue these strips of paper with handwritten names on them inside as really meaning "... made after manner of a Stradvivarius, or Guarnieri, etc. etc."  That is all it meant and all it ever meant.  As he put it, "Really all the same as putting Mickey Mantle's name on a baseball bat does not actually mean  that Mickey Mantle either used or made it!  Just a sort of embellishment is all".  

This guy Powell was very entertaining character, and told me an anecdote I'll never forget.  Seems one of the Philharmonic guys had what was known to be a genuine, accredited Stradavarius violin.  But this one lacked the paper signature slip inside the case which the real Stradivarius would have signed when it left his shop long ago.  The Philharmonic guy fretted and fretted over this - so this guy Powell told me what he did.  He once had travelled all over Europe in his researches and studies and once happened to visit a Catholic Nunnery somewhere in France or Italy.  While he was there the Mother Superior had let him wait alone or whatever in the Nunnery's Library for a while ...browsing, etc.  There were any number of old books there dating from very early times.  He said that when she was not looking, he had surreptiously torn several blank flyleaf pages out of a couple of them, and secreted them in his pocket.  (There was a method to his maddness...).  

In his restoration work, he frequently had need of replacing these slips - but that if you took modern paper and modern inks to do same, experts could easily detect this - and might then throw doubt on the authenticity of the instrument as a whole.  So what he did was compound his own inks from the proper materials used way back when and then write the names on the old paper from those days,  and in that way he created labels that were indistinguishable from originals.  And that is what he did to this "Strad" the Philharmonic guy owned...  

LOL!  

Well - to wrap this long-winded dissertation up - suffice to say that in the end I "sold" my precious find for about $20 or so to the Texas rancher cum fiddler guy.  (Hey!  I had to recoup out-of-pocket at least for all the phone calls, etc.).  And was he elated to get it!  The first thing he did was tune it up - and then play it at one of his Sunday Gospel Meetings for his enthralled Evangelicals or whomever they were - and guess what? (you can't make this stuff up!) - there was a local newspaper guy there who "did a story on it all" for him in the local paper - mentioning the dude back in New England who had found this "prized instrument" in an antique fair once, etc. etc. - and it had been described in an AP release once, etc. etc....And then he sent me a newspaper clip of this new story and I am pretty sure I still have copy in my stash back in storage.  

So there, too!  LOL!  "You can't keep a good story down," as might be said... or as my Dad used to say (favorite saying of his): "No story should suffer in the telling!" - and hopefully you have enjoyed this one!  

bernie  

ps-  

Kind of a sad aftermath to it all - in a way.  Long after, I happened to read or hear once in some fashion, that Powell, the fiddle expert who really explained it all for me that time, had been mysteriously murdered in his lonely home back up in the boonies of CT there.  I never heard anymore and know of no follow-up - and cannot really say (recall) - but it may well have been thieves who were after some of the very valuable instruments he was known to keep around the premises...