Music has always been a big part of my life. In fact, there was a time I actually thought I'd be a professional musician. A singer, songwriter, guitar player. I got started when our mom and dad bought my brother Jerry and me a couple guitars from Sears when we were probably 6 and 7. They were like $12 or S13 apiece. which was a hell of a gift when you realize that between the two of them, Mom and Pop made about so cents an hour at the steel mill.
So Jerry and I started teaching ourselves to play. He's a natural and before too long we got where people actually liked to hear us. Then we started singing along, because that's how everybody on the radio did it.
You have to remember, it was a different way of life in those days. There was no TV or anything, so for entertainment we'd all go to the Community Club at Pontoon Beach, which was like a tavern and dance hall. They served alcohol, but it wasn't like a bar today. It was a family thing. The kids all had their own table off to the side and we'd eat barbecue and burgers and drink Cokes. For entertainment they'd have different acts that would sing or dance or whatever.
Just local people. Kind of like an open mic night now. Well, one night somebody said, "Why don't you guys get up there?' So we did. We did two or three songs, and people threw pennies and nickels and dimes at us, and man, we thought we were rich! We were probably 9 and 10 by then, and that was a big deal.
So we practiced up and learned some more songs, and we went busking on the corner in Granite City. Jerry would play the guitar and we'd both sing, I'd dance, mostly tap kind of stuff, and pass a tin cup. And people would put money in it!
We had this fantasy of being big music stars. We couldn't get to Nashville to try out for the Grand Old Opry, which was as big a deal as we could imagine. So we auditioned for the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, because they traveled around doing auditions. We figured that was going to be our national debut. We sang a song Eddie Fisher made famous, 'The Girl That I Marry. Well, we didn't make the cut. We were pretty bummed out for a while, because we figured that meant we'd have to work in the mill, too. But I was still selling my drawings, and then I started selling some paintings, and I never really thought about music as a career again. Jerry still plays guitar. In fact, he can play anything with strings. I traded one of my pieces for a beautiful Martin D-38 and gave it to him. And man, he can make it sing. But I've lost my voice. And you know, I'm way past my dancing days!