The Johnstown Musicians' Society

 The Johnstown Music Society is right down town

It resides in a mansion of sorts: four stories, six bedrooms

And an old woman lives there, A Clarinet Player, and she teaches all of the reed instruments

And she plays them all too - every one, every size, every kind

And she chainsmokes cigarettes

And she teaches

In the 60's when she moved to the mansion it housed 15 musicians who moved there from all over the country and they went in together and they bought a mansion

And they made music

and they taught music

And they cultivated a culture of excellence, just those few, in that tiny city in the mountains.

The high schools became known for music. And for winners when it came to music.

And they were thriving and they were happy.

And the Clarinet Player lived among them and they all traded cigarettes and war stories and played in union pits for musical theatres and they sat on the porch in rockers and laughed about making mistakes in a culture where you don't make them.

There were music stands filled with music. There was a living room of music. There were shelves and shelves of music. There were photographs of instruments and floors filled with sheets and sheets and sheets and sheets of Music.

The Clarinet Player sits on the porch in the year 2022 and smokes a cigarette and there are six other chairs rocking mildly. Empty and mildly in the wind of the winter. 

No smoking in the house: 

"the students won't like it" - (the parents really, sometimes you share a cigarette with a kid, sometimes, because it's the culture).

In the year 2022 she checks the thermostat of the central heating and sets it at 66 and sits in the living room where the fireplace is vacant save stacks of music for brass musicians, none of whom reside here,

 and she laughs a little because of the time she had sex with a trumpet player she never intended to continue with past breakfast, but she was glad to have a trumpet in the mix and he stayed on a few years, just not in her bedroom.

She drinks a cup of coffee and the sun slants inside on the ancient green carpet that's been the same since - since she arrived with her backpack and her instrument and that's it and never looked back on Ohio and the suburbs.

Her hair on her shoulders in braids sitting on the floor in a circle with The Greats

Music trickling out onto the creek out back and down the river

A city full of music

A symphony they made from scratch in their kitchen over coffee and pancakes.

Her glasses slip down over her nose.

She knows what it's like to age:

The way you extend yourself somehow into your ninth decade and the people who made you slide back into memory. Just the wind now, in the rockers.