Retro Redux: Mouth-Harps — From Lincoln To Dylan And Beyond

Whenever I hear a mouth-harp (what most people call a harmonica) I think of my maternal grandfather, who grew up during the early part of the 20th century in an area filled with hard-scrabble farm folks. As was the norm at that time and place, he had only a grade-school education, and he spent a lot of years as a tenant farmer, but always worked hard to provide for his family, even through the worst years of the depression.

Tenant farmers, more commonly called sharecroppers in the South, worked farmland that was owned by someone else and then divided the profits. It was a system that was ripe for exploitation and some of the tenants did have bad times, but many landowners knew the value of a good, dependable tenant and acted accordingly. My Grand-dad raised his family as a tenant farmer, and I never heard him say anything bad about his landlords. Of course, it wouldn't have been in character for him to complain, but knowing his work ethic I think he probably did Okay.

By the time I was old enough to know my Grand-dad, he was in late middle-age and was no longer farming. My Mother and her siblings had moved out by then, and he and Grandma had moved into a small house that was near the edge of a small village, but still very rural — enough so that they could have a big vegetable garden every year.

Of course, you couldn't survive on just vegetables, and ex-tenant farmers didn't have pension plans, so my Grand-dad still had to work. My first memories of him included his job at that time, and I also remember occasionally going with him while he performed it. I don't think they had "take your kid (or grandkid) to work" days exactly, but the kind of job he had made it easy. He was a night watchman at a complex of big warehouses in a nearby town, and those warehouses were filled with huge barrels of tobacco. Locals called the place "the tobacco barns".

I'm not sure why one of the big tobacco companies maintained a storage facility in that area, because as far as I know tobacco wasn't grown anywhere around there, but that's where Grand-dad and I spent an occasional summer night. I was pretty young and usually fell asleep part-way through the night, but for a while I was full of energy as we made his rounds from building to building in the spooky darkness.

Article Author: Big Geez

The Big Geez is a retiree who takes time off from trimming his ear hair to write about music -- sometimes doing conventional reviews, but often just sharing his opinions about how something resonates with his memories and those of his generation. …

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