09/23/2025
❤️❤️❤️
When I was young, I inherited my grandfather’s banjo, after his passing. Because kids of my era had nothing better to do—there was certainly no timewasting online—I picked up the banjo, figured out a few useful chords on my own and I began to play.
It wasn’t until I was seated, a bit naively, in a group of aspiring banjo players at a camp setting, that I became aware of something quite inexplicable going on. We were seated in a circle, while the instructor went around the group, just to hear each person play and get an idea where of they were at.
“Let’s hear from you, now,” he stopped in front of me. My throat was dry and my fingers felt stiff as boards, my hands were cold and I hadn’t a coherent thought in my brain, beyond a rising sense of panic. I've never been brave about performing in front of other people.
All the other players in my group knew which key they were playing in. They asked the instructor which style—frailing, clawhammer or bluegrass—he wanted them to use. They had a play list that was either written down, or they had a stack of sheet music with notation on the seats beside them.
All I knew for sure was that I had nothin’. It was just me and a really old, out-of-style banjo.
I hadn’t counted on my Grandpa, however. With some encouragement, I closed my eyes and began to play. A silence quickly fell over the huge room, which I took as judgment and so, I stopped. I was young and I began to feel a familiar prickling back of my eyes, knowing that I would be revealed as a fraud and asked to leave. Sixteen-year-old girls can be their own worst enemies.
Happily, banjo players aren’t like that. They, along with bagpipers, are the friendliest musicians in the world.
“Where did you learn to play like that?” the instructor asked me. “Who taught you to pick the way you do?” I could only shrug wordlessly, for there were no books, no Youtube videos and certainly, no teachers, in my little world.
I had simply held the banjo, tuned it according to how it was already sort of tuned and began to play.
“Well, you’re doing a style of up-picking that hasn’t really been used in decades; maybe since the First World War. It’s as though we’re listening to your old banjo being played by someone in the 1920s!”
The room stilled. No wonder this kid had sounded weird! I could only sit there with shivers going up and down my spine. My grandfather, who had lived three provinces away from us, so I had had mininal contact with him, had lost his original banjo in the trenches in France. After a gas attack, when he was removed by ambulance to convalesce at a country house hospital in England, his pals got together and sent him money to buy this ‘new’ banjo.
This was the very one he had sat with and played, as he tried to regain his health. He then continued to play it all the remaining years of his life. His playlist was written in his Victorian hand, on the back of the skin head, a secret that only the old five-string banjo, my grandpa and I shared.
Of course, the banjo would have memories of this. It would have vibrations that ran along the strings and told me which chords to play with my left hand; what rhythms and melodies to pick, with my right. It had somehow, inexplicably been Grandpa guiding me, all along.
Perhaps there is a scientific reason why I, a child of the 1970s, learned to play an archaic style of methodology, without a teacher, on an instrument that was over sixty years my senior.
I might add that while I am termed ‘musical’, I have never been able to read music notation. I have received no instruction on any instrument, save brief bouts on the piano and later, the saxophone, when—in a huge flood of relief for all concerned—my teachers suddenly gave up.
I prefer to believe in the power of the ancestors, for I am one of those people who trusts that this is a mighty thing.
This girl, Georgia, might agree with me.
Ten days ago, Georgia was at the ranch with so many other good people, to enjoy our Keystone gathering, along with thirteen other special horses who have long worn our brand. We spent a beautiful day together, before everyone packed up and moseyed on home.
Georgia and her family left with Flint, along with their old Keystone horse, Harry. I wrote about it, sometime last week.
Georgia and Flint have wasted no time getting straight to work, a good thing, as the unstarted pony is already fourteen years old. Children and horses don’t understand the word ‘can’t’, though, not like we grownups do. They just believe they can and so, they make it happen.
This is Flint and Georgia, the day before going to their very first horse show together. Flint had been entered in the halter geldings class and they needed to find something suitably lovely to put upon his head.
Eventually, one halter was chosen because it settled onto the pony with all the fit and good feelings of a pair of favourite slippers.
It’s beautiful, with all its silver hearts, yes... but it’s also Georgia’s grandfather’s old show halter, last worn in the 1970s. It was proudly on his favourite horse ever, an Appaloosa mare named Flames Banner, when she won the Canadian Championship, way back when. It’s Flint’s show halter, now. I can only imagine her Grandpa’s surprise when Georgia and Flint strode into the show pen last weekend, wearing this.
The pony carried himself like a rock star, even if he didn’t place in the huge class made of multi-breeds of horses. They had the ‘power of the grandfather’ as their blessing and they did not disappoint.
In another beautiful twist, Flint and Georgia have now begun working under saddle. I will share a picture of their second ride, in the comments.
The only saddle that would fit this somewhat narrow pony’s angles, with short enough skirts? It was her other grandpa’s contribution, a saddle that he rode, back in the 1960s, of course. Of course.
We are all joined together by a long, long thread.
Sometimes, we just have to believe in the power of things that remain unseen. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I know this, you know this. Flint and Georgia know this, as well. It is a knowledge that goes back before the dawn of time, ours for the taking, if only we are willing to listen.
Photo: A.W.S.
