Noon Star

After the Recital

Dad, Mom, Greg, Judy, having ice cream at the Penguin, as was customary after a piano recital. About 1954.

Dad says, "That was a massacre, all right." Silence. "It said in the program March but it sounded to me more like January." Silence. Spoons in banana splits. "Stagger, maybe, but not march. For going to bars, not battles." He is joking, getting past the disaster.

Mom says, "Enough, already."

"It reminds me," Dad says, "of something in Pogo."

That was when I became interested in the guitar.