Up on Dupont, there’s some sort of store that repairs and sells musical instruments. In front of the shop they often display a piano with a sign on it that says PLAY ME. As I was approaching the store, I saw an older man who must have been in his late 60’s approach it. He had a bit of a belly, had his dungarees pulled up high, and was wearing a John Deere cap. Honestly, he looked liked he just stepped off a tractor.
The piano caught his eye and he approached it. Giving it a slightly suspicious look, he began to play it with his right hand. The song was “Oh! Susanna.”
I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee,
I’m going to Louisiana, my true love for to see
It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don’t you cry.
Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me
I come from Alabama,
With my banjo on my knee.
The man was smiling, like he was pleased he remembered how to play the tune, and this made me smile, too, imagining him learning the song in some church basement 60 years earlier, forced by his mother to take some piano lessons he absolutely detested.
I went into a nearby grocery store where I began to unconsciously whistle the song. A few minutes later, the piano playing man came into the store, and he also was whistling the song, and then, yet a few minutes later, I heard one of the clerks humming the song. It had gone viral. You never know how the piano lessons you took as a boy are going to spread out into the future, into the world.