September 12, 2021
what a great experience and great little memory!
After having dropped off my Hohner Morino VI N this past July 26th at Anderson’s Accordion Repair, I needed to wait a bit more than a month before it being ready to be picked up… and so September 11th was the day that I had a fun day.
During my talks with Keith (Anderson), he asked me if I would pick up an accordion for him in Kingston, Ontario as I was basically passing by the town on my way to see him, to which I happily agreed to oblige. I was given the address, name and phone number and told that they were expecting me.
Well, since I had to pick up this accordion, I could not leave at my normal super early time (which is usually around 1:00-2:00 AM), and so we ended up leaving around 5:00am. Because of my schedule and other demands on my time, I had ONE day to make this all happen, so timing was tight! Before anyone asks, yes my mother was my co-pilot with me yet again on this trip. 🙂
We zipped to the location in Kingston, and when I was a few hundred meters away from the address at around 8:30am, I called, announced my presence and went to make the pick-up. Getting to the location, I had the pleasure of meeting another fellow accordionist, but she had a bit of an upper hand… she knew me by my internet moniker “Jerry PH” and that she read some stuff I posted in the GR8 Ideas Facebook group. After a pleasant 2-3 minute conversation, I placed the Hohner accordion case on the back seat of my car, secured it and off we went to the next leg of our journey (Laura was super nice and I hope to one day hear her plat at one of her gigs!).
Toronto… UGH. Getting through it is always a pain in the backside… the traffic for a Saturday morning was way worse than the full out traffic of Montreal on it’s busiest weekday at 5:00PM! I always just grit my teeth and push through.
Finally getting to Burlington, we had a chance to relax a bit and Keith was just a super gentleman. Seeing my accordion in it’s case, we took it out but it was hard for me to do much more than futz on my Morino as my hands were swollen and sore from the drive, but it was kind of like coming home. The one thing that always gets me is how heavy the Morino is… the thing is a work-out to use but the tones and sweetness of it all came back to me and she sounded and felt GREAT. On top of all the good things that Keith did to address my issues with the accordion, he threw in some very awesome things! A wide wrist strap that totally matches my shoulder straps, 4 leather shoulder belt buckle covers and some adjustments on the treble side… THANK-YOU!
Next stop on the trip was Burlington cemetery where we spent some time with my father. We cleaned things up, changed flowers and enjoyed our newly installed marble and engraved bench that we had placed there less than a week ago. After that, there wasn’t much time left in the day and we had a loooooooong way to go to get back home… and so, that is exactly what we did.
It’s now later afternoon, and Toronto traffic was again quick to remind me that it doesn’t matter how many lanes it has, each and every one of them turns on to a parking lot during the morning and afternoon rush-hour times… 7 days a week! As soon as we were past Whitby things started to become manageable and I put the pedal down to start making up some of the time.
Well we got home in record time (something like 10:30PM) and after taking everything out of the car, I pulled the accordion out of it’s case and placed it on our table, ready for the next day’s start of playing it for the recommended 200 hours before the felts are all broken in and doing their best. I look forward to slowly getting to know my Hohner Morino again, and slowly getting back to playing on the Free Bass. I have some wild plans and dreams in the air that include this accordion… but that’s a post for another time.
Addendum: The next morning I find a friend request from Laura which I happily confirm and also after a little back and forth, a super nice text from Keith that he found the missing “I” in my Morino logo that fell off on his bench… yay!
We’ll easily get that replaced the next time I am there!