Hope, Halsey, Truman and Me.
I can’t play the piano a lick.
But I can do the beach.
So that’s where I am right now.
A girls’ weekend celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday with my sister, my daughter and of course, me mum.
We had an awesome late afternoon on the beach.
For dinner,
I steamed shrimp and fried hush puppies for dinner. My sister made cole slaw and the most awesome-ish cocktail sauce ever.
And over dinner we started talking about the owners of this house.
The McFall House where Rear Admiral McFall retired.
His four grandchildren now own the spread and one of them happens to be neighbors to my sister.
They graciously let us rent it for the weekend.
Woo.
But I just thought Woo because beach. Then we started talking about the Admiral.
He was the first person to EVER successfully make it in a plane catapulted off a warship. There had been other attempts but McFall was the first to do it.
Luckily he didn’t live up to his name.
A graduate of the Naval Academy, he later served as its athletic director.
He was commander of the USS Hornet when it was sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
And here’s the cool part. His final tour was as commander of the Jacksonville Navel Air Station.
While there he entertained dignitaries such as Bob Hope, Bull Halsey (another Admiral that I didn’t know but my mum — the 80 year old one knew all about) and a then Senator from Missouri Harry Truman in this house.
That’s when Mom said, “Have you seen the top of that piano? It’s scuffed and got glass rings all over it.”
Piano? I’d been in the place for six hours and not even noticed the piano.
Rear Admiral McFall. I noticed him on the wall.
But right under him was a piano.
A water-marked piano that held highballs of history-makers while Harry Truman played the Missouri Waltz.
How cool is that?
“Hannah,” I said to my piano playing daughter, “You’ve got to play on the piano Harry Truman played.”
“What? I don’t know anything to play?” was her sullen reply.
After cleaning up the kitchen mess with Sister, the more I thought about it. Darn it. Why wouldn’t someone want to play that piano?
I can play that piano.
So I put my highball on the beast.
Okay, it’s a glass of chardonnay. I’m a girl. What can I say?
And I played the one song I know how to play.
Chopsticks.
But I played.
I drank a toast with the spirit of Hope, Halsey and Truman, all the while apologizing for my inability to play the piano.
And my lack of respectability in choice of a drink.
