It’s the official US Army Song Book from the Second World War. It begins, as you’d expect, with the Star Spangled Banner (three verses!), but the complete contents is eclectic, to say the least:

1. The Star Spangled Banner
2. Alma Mater
3. Aloha Oe
4. America
5. America, the Beautiful
6. Anchors Aweigh
7. The Army Air Corps
8. Song of the Army Engineer
9. Auld Lang Syne
10. Battle Hymn of the Republic
11. Bombed
12. The Caissons Go Rolling Along
13. Parody Field Artillery Song
14. Carry Me Back to Old Virginny
15. Casey Jones
16. Cindy
17. Colombo
18. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean
19. Crash On! Artillery
20. Dixie
21. Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes
22. Arms for the Love of America (The Army Ordnance Song) by Irving Berlin
23. For Her Lover Who Was Far Away
24. For Sev’n Long Years
25. God Bless America
26. God of Our Fathers
27. Good Night, Ladies!
28. Home, Boys, Home! & The Infantry (there are two number 28′s: a SNAFU, I guess)
29. A Home on the Range
30. Honey Dat I Love So Well
31. I’ll Tell You Where They WEre
32. The Infantry (different than the previous one by this name)
33. It’s a Long Way to Tipperary
34. I’ve Been Workin’ on de Railroad
35. Juanita
36. K-K-K-Katy, plus parodies of the chorus of K-K-K-Katy, such as “K-K-K-K. P., Dirty old K.P., That’s the only Army Job that I abhor…” or the even more evocative “C-c-c-cootie, Horrible cootie, You’re the only b-b-b-bug that I abhor…”)
37. The Last Round-Up
38. Let Me Call You Sweetheart
39. The Man on the Flying Trapeze
40. The Marines’ Hymn
41. The Mintrels Sing of an English King
42. The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga
43. The Mountain Battery
44. My Buddy
45. My Wild Irish Rose (plus a parody, “My wild eyed cadet,/He ain’t learned nothing yet,/He noses her down/When close to the ground…”)
46. The New River Train
47. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen
48. Oh! Susanna
49. The Old Gray Mare, She Ain’t What She Used To Be
50. Old Joe Clark (not a song about the former Canadian Prime Minister)
51. Old King Cole (with a modified chorus glorifying the “Fighting Infantry”: each chorus adds another rank, so the final chorus runs, “The Army’s gone to hell,” said the generals;”What’s my next command?” said the colonels;/”Where’re my boots and spurs?” said the majors;/”We want ten days’ leave,” said the captains;/”We do all the work,” said the shavetails;/”Right by squads, squads right,” said the sergeants;/”Beer, beer, beer,” said the privates,/”Merry men are we./There’s none so fair as can compare/With the Fighting Infantry.”
52. The Old Plantation
53. On, Brave Old Army Team
54. Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag
55. Pop! Goes the Weasel
56. The Raw Recruit
57. Red River Valley
58. She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain
59. Slum and Gravy & Sons of Randolph (there are two number 59s)
60. Smiles
61. Song of the Signal Corps
62. A Stein Song
63. Tammany
64. There’s a Long, Long Trail
65. Where Do We Go From Here?
66. Yankee Doodle
67. You’re in the Army Now

It’s an interesting mixture of sentimental old favorites, patriotic  songs, and songs poking fun at Army life. I like, for one example, Bombed:

We were bombed last night, bombed the night before

And we’re going to be bombed tonight as we never were bombed before.

When we’re bombed, we’re as scared as we can be,

They can bomb the whole darn Army if they don’t bomb me.

CHORUS

They’re over us, over us,

One little cave for the four of us,

Glory be to God, there are no more of us

Or they’d surely bomb the whole darned crew.

But I think my favorite part of the book is the warning you can see on the image of the inside front cover:

“This book is the property of the United States Government and its contents may be used only with the military services.”

Which means, of course, that every time since 1941 that anyone has sung “Home on the Range” or “That Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” they’ve been breaking military regulations.

I’ve sung both many times myself. I feel so ashamed.

Cover art has come a long way since then, hasn’t it?

Mostly I’ll post things I can scan. Like this 1912 postcard, which was sent to Sam Goodfellow a few days after the Regina Cyclone, the devastating tornado that killed 28 people, injured hundreds, left 2,500 homeless and destroyed or damaged 500 buildings. It remains Canada’s worst tornado disaster. The postcard writer simply says “sincerely hope you weren’t injured in Sunday’s tragedy,” and adds, “It was awful.”

I’ll post a few pages almost every day, I hope. They make for fascinating reading.

Sam ended the war in a German POW camp after the Hanley Page bomber in which he was an observer for was shot down. He didn’t suffer a scratch. He was one of the lucky ones.

But then again, if he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have married his granddaughter, and would never have known these memoirs existed.

The memoirs, written sometime in the 1970s, actually cover his life pre-World War One (and a bit after) as well, but I’m going to limit myself to the war memoirs, beginning today with his enlistment.

***

THE FIRST WORLD WAR MEMOIRS OF SAMPSON J. GOODFELLOW

PART I: ENLISTMENT

Toronto Technical School had only a class of 25 and we sat for our matriculation the summer of 1914. When we got the Algebra Examination Paper, there were questions we could not answer. Anyway, we tried our best.

We had only gone as far as Permutations, Combinations and the Binomial Theorem.

Mr. Warren came into our examination room, saw us with long faces and asked what was the matter. He looked at the examination paper and said something was wrong here.

“Some of these questions are not on your curriculum.”

That summer I got a job on the New Welland Ship Canal as a Machinist with Dominion Bridge. I was more taken with the idea of being a Civil Engineer.

All of us students, who had written our matriculation in 1914, returned to school in 1915. We were informed we had written Toronto Engineering first year examination paper and they had received our examination paper. We all received above the 60% average but we just got 39 in Algebra whereas 40 was a pass.

Dr. MacKay, our Principal, took the matter up with the Department of Education and it was agreed that we all had passed in Mathematics. Therefore, our Head Master, Mr. Warren, informed us that we did not have to attend school. He told us that we were free to go and enlist in the Services if we wished.

We had a meeting outside on the steps of the School to talk over what Unit it would be best for us Engineering Students to enlist in.

One of the students told us that the 3rd (third) Division Ammunitions and 3rd (third) Division Supply Columns were wanting Ambulance Drivers, Motorcycle Dispatch Riders and Truck Drivers.

They were having a difficult time getting qualified personnel so the students thought that would be O.K. to join.

The students appointed me to go and have an interview with the Adjutants of the 2 (two) Units, which I did. The Adjutants were delighted when I informed them that there was approximately 25 of us.

They told me of the requirements for us to get into either one of the Units.

We had to pass a mechanical knowledge examination and a driving test.

We had another meeting of the students, who had not enlisted; as some of them, through the influence of their parents, received Commissions in different units leaving about 18 of us.

I explained what took place at the meeting; about mechanical and driving tests, and they all agreed they could pass the tests. But they suggested I enlist first which I did.

This took place on a Friday. I was interviewed by the Adjutant of the Supply Column to have my test on Monday.

I went over to T. Eaton’s Store and purchased a book on the Theory of the Automobile which I studied the Saturday and Sunday.

I sat for the Verbal examination and did so well that they would not give me a 100%. They kept crossing me until I made a slip in the number of thousandths gap in the Distributor and Spark Plugs. I told them and then corrected myself, but they would not allow it and gave me 91%. I knew more about an Automobile than the individual who examined me; he was looking at a question and answer list.

He told me to wait and he went and had an interview with the Adjutant. Both of them had a long conversation then returned to interview me.

They wanted the particulars of my knowledge, and I just told them I was a matriculation student from Toronto Technical School, studying to go to the Toronto School of Practical Science, to study to be a Civil Engineer. I did not tell them I was a Machinist, and a Mechanical Draftsman; as they would have had me sent to Engineering Units that were short of these professions, and I would be kept in Canada. I wanted to go overseas.

They informed me if I enlisted they would make me a Lance Corporal and at a later date a Sergeant but for the present I would be the Automobile Mechanical Examiner.

I agreed and enlisted at that meeting.

I then told the rest of the students what had taken place and to come down on Tuesday which they did.

I passed them all; some joined the third division Supply Column and some the Ammunition Column.

I was the first to take a driving test and passed but admonished not to be such a fast driver.

***

It’s a bit of a cliché: the guest who can’t resist poking through his host’s medicine cabinet, just to see what’s in there.

That’s quite the collection of bottles, tins and boxes you’ve got there, Ed. And some of them look pretty old.

Decades old in some cases, I’m sure, although of course it’s hard to be certain with some medicines, because sometimes the packaging hardly chances at all over the years.

Take this one, bearing the picture of a man with a quite remarkable mustache. It contains an almost full bottle of Sloan’s Liniment. It certainly looks old, but I imagine the packaging didn’t change much over decades. It is bilingual, and the Consumer Packaging and Labeling Act requiring bilingual packaging wasn’t introduced until 1974, but it’s also quite likely that Standard Laboratories of Toronto, which packaged it, was already making bilingual packages for sale in Quebec prior to that.

However old this particular bottle is, Sloan’s Liniment is a long-standing home remedy. It was developed by Earl Sawyer Sloan, who was born in Zanesfield, Ohio, in 1848. Earl’s father, Andrew, had a way with horses, and concocted a strong-smelling liniment he rubbed into their shoulders when they stiffened after ploughing. (According to legend, he got the recipe from the local Indians.) In 1871, Earl moved to St. Louis, taking several bottles of his father’s liniment with him. HE and his brother, Foreman, peddled it for about 25 years at farms, horse fairs and carnivals. At some point someone with sore muscles tried it on himself, and discovered it helped ease pain. The Sloan brothers started selling even more with the slogan “good for man and beast.” Earl advertised it in Chicago streetcars, and business boomed even further. In 1900 Earl (who began calling himself “Doctor” Earl S. Sloan) organized a company to manufacture the liniment. He advertised heavily in newspapers, opened offices in Canada, England, Australia and Amsterdam, and retired a wealthy man, selling the business in 1913. Sloan’s Liniment is still being made, I believe: its secret ingredient is capsaicin, one of the substances that makes peppers hot. Basically, it mildly irritates the skin, which cause the body to produce so much of one of the neurotransamitters that communicates pain to the brain that there’s none left over to communicate the pain from the strained muscles or aching joints. HEET and other similar liniments use the same basic stuff.

That’s a pretty–and pretty old looking–green bottle next to it. Is that another patent medicine?

Yes. This one is Pineoleum, “a combination of mentol, camphor, oils of cassia, eucalyptus, pine needles and refined petrolatum,” “an oil spray and inhalant for nose and throat.” I didn’t find nearly as much about this as I did about Sloan’s, but the stuff dates back to the late 19th century as well, and was put to a number of uses. I ran across a column by a dentist who described an ad he saw while perusing the September, 1930, issue of Oral Hygeiene, which claimed dentists could prevent catching colds from patients by spraying the patient’s nose and throat with Pineoleum.

Both of those are in nice glass bottles, but you’ve also got a couple of old tins there, little flat ones. What are in those?

One’s a product we all instantly recognize: Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia tablets. Again, there’s no sure way to date this. We still see various lozenges and other products in tins similar to these. Drug manufacturers began using them in 1879 when the Somers Brothers of Brooklyn, New York, developed a method of printing labels directly onto tin. Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia Tablets were among the earliest products to take advantage of the new packaging.

Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia itself was invented by Charles Henry Phillips, who lived from 1820 to 1882 and in 1873, while living in Stamford, Connecticut, received a patent for “hydrate of magnesia mixed with water.” I note that the inside of this tin says Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia had been he “standard for over 50 years,” but I don’t know when they started counting the 50 years from, so that doesn’t help to date the tin. However, an additional item in this tin is a card urging you to remember, when you buy tooth paste, “Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia Tooth Paste.” Apparently it contained over 75 percent Genuine Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia and was sold in 25 cent and 50 cent tubes. Not a product I’ve ever run across!

This other tin contains Elastoplast band…er, “elastic adhesive antiseptic” bandages. (I started to call them band-aids, but of course Band-Aid is its own brand name.)

You’ve got a couple of interesting soaps there, too, don’t you?

Well, technically I have one soap and one soap-substitute.

This is the only black bar of soap I think I’ve ever seen. It’s an unused bar of Packer’s Tar Soap, and although this particular bar probably isn’t very old–older bars were packaged in tin, not cardboard–the soap itself is fascinating. Capt. Daniel Packer once commanded his own sloop, but when gold was found in California in 1849, he headed out west. Apparently his real niche was neither as sailor or miner but as soap manufacturer, and after developing his soap in California, he returned to Mystic, Connecticut, where he began begin manufacturing what he called “lightning soap” in 1869. Sailors from the port spread its fame far and wide and it became a huge success. It claims to be “Pure as the pines,” so I’m guessing it’s pine tar, and not petroleum tar, that gives it its name. The 1886 Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic, a medical journal, calls Packer’s Tar Soap “the best of all, whether as a toilette or a surgical soap…remarkably pure, cleansing and healing” and the February, 1909, issue of Canadian Life and Resources has an ad for it claiming you can use it to “fortify your skin against the annoyance of wintry weather.”

I may have to give it a try sooner rather than later.

This other box caught my eye because it’s rather unusually illustrated with a cartoon of a man in a dressing gown, towel over one arm, fleeing a bar of soap: “For the patient who must avoid soap…” it says, and it contains several doctor’s sample bars of Aveeno Emulave soap substitute. My mother-in-law, Dr. Alice Goodfellow, received these in 1971 when she was working in Toronto.

And what old-time medicine cabinet would be complete without a bottle of castor oil?

Indeed. Also cod liver oil. But what’s really interesting about this bottle of Castor oil is where it came from: Jolly Drugs Limited, Dispensing Chemists, Cor. Rose & 11th Ave., Regina, Sask., Phone 23833. The Jolly in question was Edward A. Jolly, who was born in Brantford, Ontario, in 1879. After working in various drug stores in the East, he came to Regina in January, 1905, where he first managed a drug store, then bought it. At one time he had five drug stores in the city, but he eventually settled down to running this one, which was in a two-story building with his store on the bottom and a rooming house on top. (It’s now a parking lot.) Jolly worked there six days a week until he died in 1965 at the age of 86.

According to the 1924 book The Story of Saskatchewan and Its People, by John Hawkes, “Mr. Jolly is said to have the finest drug stores in all Canada. He carries a large stock of drugs and a complete line of phonographs.”

And also, obviously, castor oil.

Care for a sip? You could use this measuring glass from Brownlee Drug Store, located at 2146 Albert St.–that would be the Nouveau Gallery today. It would be like tasting liquid Regina history. Or perhaps you’d prefer some decades-old Norwegian Cod Liver Oil?

Um…no thanks.

Well, maybe next time.

Ed Willett has been exploring the recesses of the house that has been in his wife’s family for 70 years…and this week has uncovered shocking news: people in the past used to smoke cigarettes.

Ed, I know you don’t smoke. So what’s with all these lighters and cigarette cases?

Smoking was once much more socially acceptable than it is now, so even if you didn’t smoke (though Sam Goodfellow, my grandfather-in-law, did), you had to have the paraphernalia of smoking in your house to accommodate all your smoking friends. I grew up in a completely non-smoking house, with parents who frowned on smoking by anyone, but we still had an ashtray or two just in case when I was little.

And of course, you had to have lighters. And I see you have two of them here.

Yes, and they’re quite different, though probably not separated by all that many years.

This is a silver-plated Ronson Crown table lighter, and it probably dates from the 1940s or 1950s.

Ronson, originally known as The Ronson Art Metal Works, was formed by Louis V. Aronson in 1886 in New York City, but it moved just a year later to New Jersey, where it still operates.

Interestingly, all this stuff sits on a silver-plated copper trade that also says Rogers on the bottom–but this is Wm. A. Rogers, and that’s actually yet another different company, even though all these items look like they belong together. This Rogers was a master American silversmith and a pioneer in the silverplate industry, whose name has been passed on through various companies since his death in 1873. Wm. A. Rogers on the bottom of this platter means it was likely actually made by Oneida Silver, which acquired the mark in 1929.

Oneida is an interesting company in its own right: it arose from a 19th century Utopian Society founded in 1848 in Oneida, New York, by John Humphrey Noyes. Noyes had come up with his own unique Christian theology, called Perfectionism, based on the values of self-perfection and communalism (which extended to something called “complex marriage”: every man and every woman in the community was considered married to each other.) The community manufactured a number of items, including silver knives and forks and spoons. It was disbanded in 1880, but members re-organized as a joint stock company called the Oneida Community, Ltd., which eventually gave rise to Oneida Silversmiths and the Oneida Ltd. company that is still functioning today.

Let’s move from smoking to a different vice: alcohol. Any interesting discoveries there?

Well, there are these lead-crystal decanters. Beautiful, but you wouldn’t dare use them now: scientists discovered in the early 1990s that tiny amounts of lead begin to migrate from lead crystal into win within a few minutes after the wine is poured, and large amounts can collect in wine that’s stored in them. So we just look at them. I like this one, though: it has a plaque on it thinking Sam and Nancy for their many contributions to Regina Little Theatre.

Then there’s this odd object: a liqueur bottle with four separate containers inside it. It’s a Bol’s 4, and it was a promotional item put out by the Bols company–which is, incidentally, the world’s oldest distillery, founded in Amsterdam in 1575–in the 1970s. It contained apricot brandy, creme de menthe, curacao triple sec and cherry brandy, with each section of the bottle stoppered with its own little cork. Alas, nothing is left of the liqueurs except for what looks like some green jelly in the bottom of what was presumably the crème de menthe section.

There’s this Canadian classic: a brown stubby unopened bottle of Labatt’s Velvet Cream Stout. Neither the beer–a type which won a major beer competition in Belgium for Labatt’s in 1958, the year before I was born–or the bottle, which ruled from 1961 to 1984, is still being made.

And finally, there’s this.

An unopened Christmas present?

Unopened, but I know what’s in it: a bottle of Bell’s 20-year-old Royal Reserve blended Scotch whiskey. It was a favorite of Margaret Anne’s father, William Hodges–he prevailed upon the Liquor Board to bring it into the store–and for many years friends would buy him a bottle for Christmas. This one still hasn’t been opened. Bell’s Scotch Whiskey is still being made, but not the 20-year-old Royal Reserve.

I think it’s the perfect toast for this house, and everyone who’s lived in it.

***
If you have children, you know how child-related stuff tends to pile up. And since kids grow up so fast, some of it is barely used before they’re too big for it and it gets put away somewhere, never to see the light of day again…

Ed, does your mother-in-law, Dr. Alice Goodfellow, come from a big family?

No, she was an only child, which means there isn’t as much child-related stuff in the house as there might have been otherwise.

On the other hand, it does mean I can pretty much guess that anything I found was used by her!

Take this, for instance: it’s probably a bottle my mother-in-law fed from when she was a baby. It’s an Allenburys Feeder. It’s pretty unusual looking to modern eyes, but this style of feeder was used for decades.

Allenburys Feeder was quite innovative when it was introduced in 1895. The most popular feeder in the late 1800s was turtle shaped, had a bent neck, and featured a long tube the baby sucked on. It could not be properly sterilized, and a high infant mortality rate was eventually linked to its use. The Allenburys Feeder, on the other hand, was boat shaped, and had a wide bent up neck that you pulled the teat over. The smaller opening at the other end was fitted with a vented rubber plug. The advantages: the bottle had gradations so you could measure food, had no angular corners so it could be cleaned better, had no long tube to breed germs, and had an effective valve to regulate the air flow, so the baby didn’t swallow air with her milk.

The original bottle was changed over the years to deal with some problems in the design of the valve end. This version came along in 1910 and remained on sale right through the 1950s; it was finally withdrawn from the market in 1958 when Allenburys merged with Glaxo.

The Allenburys Feeder was so ubiquitious at one time that when a Royal Dolls House was commissioned for Queen Mary by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the 1920s, it included a miniature Allenburys Feeder just one inch long, along with a mini food measure, food tin and rusks tin.

One thing associated with children is games, and I see you’ve found a couple of old ones: Quoits and…Parlor Croquet? I’ve played outdoor croquet, but I don’t think I’ve ever played it indoors.

I haven’t either, but if you have a large enough room, it could be fun, couldn’t it?

I can’t date this very precisely, but I’m guessing it’s from the late 1920s or early 1930s. It was made by Newton & Thompson Mfg. Co., which manufactured wooden toys in Brandon, Vermont, from about 1860 until the 1940s. The company was founded by Alexander Newton, who in 1855, at the age of 33, invented a kind of automated woodturning lathe that could mass-produce small wooden items like checkers, spinning tops, buttons, and other parts for toys. It’s rather remarkable the company stayed in business long enough to make this croquet set, since its works burned down twice in 1877 alone, and that same year suffered thousands of dollars in damage from a flood!

Croquet was a very popular sport for a while, and of course it’s still played, but not as often as it once was. Nobody’s entirely sure where it originated: some people say France, some say Ireland. In any event, the game between very popular in England in the 1860s and quickly spread to other English-speaking countries. One of its advantages was that it could be played by both men and women, although many people felt women had no business playing any such thing outside and should limit themselves to the indoor versions–such as parlor croquet.

After all, once women started playing sports, where could it lead? Nowhere but disaster. In fact, in 1878 the American Christian Review traced the inevitable downward spiral a woman could find herself in if she wasn’t careful. It all began with going to “a social party.” From there, she might to a “Social and play party,” then a croquet party, a picnic and croquet party, a combination picnic, croquet party and dance, leading inevitably to “Absence from church, Imprudent or immoral conduct, Exclusion from the church, A runaway match, Poverty and discontent, Shame and disgrace, Ruin.” Honestly, I don’t know why such a dangerous thing as even a parlor croquet game was allowed in this house. Perhaps I should burn it.

Quoits is a very old game, related to horseshoes (which came first depends on who you ask). It was being played in England a thousand years ago. In quoits, rings are thrown up and down a pitch at target pins at either end. In the 16th century attempts were being made to eradicate it from pubs and taverns because of its seedy character. The attempts failed, as such attempts generally do.

Indoor quoits appear to have been invented by someone in the late 19th century. This version of quoits, manufactured by the Artwood Toy Mfg. Co. (about which I’ve been unable to learn anything at all, except that they also made a popular line of toy boats) can be played indoors or out: it’s simply two wooden poles that can be set in metal bases, and four rope rings, two marked red, and two marked blue. The other interesting thing is that it contains scorekeeping from some long-ago games, featuring “Mrs. G.,” and “S.G.,” presumably Nancy and Sam Goodfellow, my grandmother and grandfather-in-law, and a “Doc H.” and “Mrs. H.”–so it was obviously a family game, and not just for kids!

Books are often popular gifts for children for Christmas and birthdays. Did you find anything interesting in that line?

There are lots, but these caught my eye: they’re annual children’s treasuries, most of them given to Alice for Christmas or birthdays around 1930 and 1931.

Take Blackie’s Children’s Annual. According to an old article I found online from the December, 1929, issue of The New Zealand Railways Magazine, “Almost every publisher to-day caters for the child reader at his season of the year by issuing several Annuals under well-known distinctive titles.” It mentions Blackie’s in particular as one of “two most enjoyable miscellanies for youngsters of both sexes, whose stage of development maybe represented as midway between the “boys” and “girls,” and those who are “little ones.” It contains “Long Stories,” such as “The Baby with the Red Label,” and “The Town of Twisted People,” short stories and verse, lots of illustrations, both colour and black and white, and even crossword puzzles and a play.

According to a history of children’s annuals, the first annuals appeared in the early 1800s in England. Originally they were bound version of material printed over the course of the year in weekly or monthly magazines, but around 1904, with the publication of the first Blackie’s Children’s Annual (the one I have is the 28th year, and was given to Alice for Christmas in 1931), they started to include original material. Then, after the First World War, they really took off. And so, in addition to Blackie’s, I have here The Children’s Treasury, The Child’s Own, The Tiny Folk’s Annual (which, oddly enough, has someone else’s name in it: it says inside that it belongs to Robert Butler, Christmas 1923), and the Bumper Book for Children.

That’s all very interesting, Ed, but when I look around I see a lot more children’s stuff you haven’t even touched on.

That’s a bit more modern, Colin. I have a seven-year-old daughter. Come back in another 70 years, and maybe my son-in-law will be happy to explore the old toys he’s found in the house, everything from Webkinz to Wii.

Because I can tell you, that kid stuff belonging to the current generation is already piling up.

Enjoy!

****

Regina has a long history as a musical city, with musical clubs, choirs, bands and, of course, the Regina Symphony Orchestra getting started within a few years of the city’s founding.

Well, Ed, the most obvious music-related artifact here is the grand piano. It’s a beauty!

It is, isn’t it? And it’s an interesting make, too, one I’d never come across until I saw this one.

This is a 5 1/2-foot grand manufactured by William Knabe & Co. Inc. The company was founded in 1837 an Knabe pianos are still being manufactured, although the name is now owned by a Korean firm, Samick Musical Instruments. By 1866 Knabe manufactured a thousand pianos a year, and ranked third in the U.S. after Steinway & Son of New York and Chickering & Sons of Boston. Because of their painstaking, hand-crafted approach to piano making, an upright piano could take six months to build, and a grand two years.

They continued to expand until their main factory in Baltimore–which is where this piano was manufactured–encompassed 300,000 square feet. In 1908 the company joined with Chickering & Son and Foster-Armstrong Co. of New York to form the American Piano Co. That company went into receivership in 1930, due to the Depression, and its Baltimore factory was closed.

Which allows me to date this piano within about 15 years. If you look inside, you’ll see an award sticker from the Panama California Exposition of 1915, so the piano has to be older than that. And since it indicates it was made in Baltimore, and that factory closed in 1930, this piano had to be manufactured sometime between 1915 and 1930.

Knabe pianos were known for their mellow tone, and said to be the closest piano in tone to the human singing voice. They became the official piano of the Metropolitan Opera in 1930. According to a 1929 piano reference book I found online, used by piano salesmen, “They combine a rare degree power and sweetness of tone, delicacy and a poetic singing character and a beauty of case design and finish not surpassed.”

Did Sam and Nancy by this piano brand-new?

No, they didn’t. This piano originally belonged–in fact, I’m guessing was bought new, by Madame Alicia Birkett. Madame Birkett was born in England and had a youthful career there in opera an oratorio before emigrating to Canada. She taught voice at the Regina Conservatory from the late 1920s until 1954; after her husband died, she moved back to England, and that’s when this piano was purchased by Sam and Nancy: Nancy had been one of her voice students.

Madame Birkett was soloist for many years at Knox Metropolitan Church and was the founder and the conductor in the 1930s of the Elizabethan Singers. Among her other pupils was Weyburn opera singer (well, she was born in Steinbach, but she grew up in Weyburn) Irene Salemka, who had an international career and whom (as proof that “It’s A Small World After All”) I interviewed when I was a reporter for the Weyburn Review, never thinking I’d one day own the piano once belonging to her voice teacher!

According to my mother-in-law, Dr. Alice Goodfellow, Madame Birkett also taught privately at her home in the Modern Apartments, where she lived on the third floor even though her husband was almost crippled with arthritis: she couldn’t bear to have anyone living above her.

Did your mother-in-law play this piano?

Some, but of course she’d left home long before it came to Sam and Nancy. They had an upright piano when she was learning, in the 1930s. But we do have her metronome: a classic French-made Maelzel Metronome, a direct descendant of the first commercially available metronomes, put on the market by Johann Nepnuk Maelzel beginning in 1816. He’s sometimes credited with inventing the metronome, but apparently he actually, um, appropriated the mechanism from a Dutch inventor, Dietrik Nikolaus Winkel.

Maelzel also invented something called the Panharmonicon, a mechanical device that could reproduce the sounds of a full orchestra, and even prevailed upon his friend Beethoven to write a special piece of music for it, called Wellington’s Victory (Battle Symphony) Opus 91. They had a falling out after Maelzel claimed that the symphony was his own property, which Beethoven adamantly insisted was not true. Nevertheless, Maelzel influenced Beethoven to be the first major composer to put metronome markings on his work. If you ever see, in old music, the marking MM=140, or something similar, that MM refers to one of these: a Maelzel Metronome.

With a piano and a metronome, there must be some old music around somewhere.

There is. Stacks of it. In fact, someday I hope to create a musical stage show called Songs I Found in My Mother-in-Law’s Piano Bench.

A lot of it belonged to Alice, but there’s also quite a bit that belonged to Nancy. Take these old operetta scores. Here’s one for Merrie England, music by Edward German, which ran at the Savoy Theatre in London for 176 performances in 1902, and another for La Cigale, music by Edmond Audran. Audran wrote more than 30 shows, which a 1909 reference book dismisses as “bright, sparkling and more or less ephemeral.”

Comic operas were popular with amateur dramatic groups around the turn of the last century, in England and in Regina. I don’t know if Nancy performed in any in Regina, but she certainly did in England as a teenager: we even have a photograph of her in costume from an amateur English production of La Cigale.

There’s some newer music here, too.

Yes, there’s also a lot of sheet music from the 1930s and 1940s. According to Alice, Nancy was great friends with Helen Jolly, the head nurse at the Regina General Hospital. Helen would buy new sheet music and bring it over to the house, and Nancy would play and both of them would sing. Alice also bought many of these herself, of course. A lot of the copies are stamped with the names of famous Regina music stores: R.H. Williams & Sons; Arcade Music Centre (Trading Co. Bldg., 12th Ave.); W.G.F. Scythe & Co. Ltd, 1843 Hamilton Street; and of course Heintzman & Co. Ltd., 1859 Scarth St.

Lots of famous songs here: “White Christmas,” “Over the Rainbow,” “You’ll Never Know,” “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life,” “When There’s a Breeze on Lake Louise”…

Sorry? What was that last one?

You never heard of “When There’s a Breeze on Lake Louise?” Neither had I until now, but apparently it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942! It’s from a movie called The Mayor of 44th Street, a drama about an ex-vaudevillian dancer who opens up a dance band agency to help street kids by hiring them out as musicians. How a breeze over Lake Louise figures into the story, I have no idea.

Do you have a favorite piece of music?

This one. It has a gorgeous red, blue and gold cover, with a Chinese dragon on it, and beautiful illustrations inside. The title is “Po Ling and Ming Toy: A Chinese Suite by Rudolf Friml.” Friml is probably most famous as the author of Rose Marie–which is the operetta one might have expected “When There’s a Breeze on Lake Louise” to be from, but the main reason I like it is because inside it it says, “Alice Goodfellow: June 25/36, 1st prize in general proficiency (senior grades).”

This house has been filled with music over the years. I hope that continues!