LESSONS

By Miles Patrick Yohnke

© 2021 All Rights Reserved.

Doris Merkosky, a young at heart 84-year-old blind woman phoned me with real panic in her voice, "There is this concert at the Bassment, I'd like to go. Will you take me? Can you find out more information for me?" I replied, I would take her and that it was a tribute concert for Everett Larson.

I have fond memories of Mr. Everett Larson.

I took guitar lessons at Mr. Everett Larson's music store, "Everett's School of Music" each Saturday from 11:30 a.m. till noon from 1977 to 1980.

For my first year I had a young female guitar teacher. I was filled with self-doubt and extremely shy. That first year was painfully awkward for me.

The next three years was with a person named Gerald. Everett's School of Music was on 3rd Ave. near 22nd street and is now a Credit Union bank. At that time all the music stores were in this same general area of Saskatoon.

I looked forward to each of those lessons. I'd learn a song or two each week. Then the following week I'd play it for Gerald. If good, we'd move on. If not, he'd show me my mistakes and give me another week of practice to get it right or spend more time with it if really needed.

My 1978 Gibson Les Paul Standard. It's a terrible photo but it means a lot to me as it was the first photo that I took and developed myself.

It was always about timing and feel for me. As I developed, if you can call it that, we went from Mel Bay to Led Zeppelin as they were all I was about back then. There is a Led Zeppelin song, "Over the Hills and Far Away" and it took me weeks to partially capture the essence of that one.

In the early spring of 1979, there was a large Saskatchewan guitar recital held in the City of Prince Albert. For weeks I practiced the Led Zeppelin song, "Stairway to Heaven." Gerald would have been about 18 or 19 years old at that time and I was 15.

I would play him that song over and over, and yes, over again.

He said that he was driving up to Prince Albert and that his girlfriend was coming along. I drove up with my mom as I still didn't have my driver's license.

I was nervous, really nervous. What am I doing this for? I'm going to pass out in front of all these people. Why did I say yes was my thinking as I opened the door to the complex.

I was at that age that being with your mom wasn't really that cool.

I then saw Gerald, my guitar teacher.

WHAT! WHAT? Oh my God. His girlfriend is the only girl in my high school that held my eye. Nadine was her name.

I'm thinking, "Nadine goes out with Gerald?"

F * # K!

And she is here? OH MY GOD!

There we sat, the four of us. It was awkward. I was scared. Waiting. And more waiting, and I'm thinking, "I can't play, and now, on this day, I'm not only going to play for all these people, but in front of Nadine too?"

Why did I choose a song that was 7 minutes and 51 seconds long? WAS I MAD? Of all songs to have chosen! Talk about timing!

Two hours passed as guitar player after guitar player from across the province of Saskatchewan performed.

But all I really could think about was what did Nadine see in Gerald?

And then came my time. I began warming up a few players before me. Then going on stage, it all seemed a blur. I'm sure with my first few notes that the panel of judges must have thought: "Oh no, not Stairway to Heaven and 8 minutes more of this!"

Somehow, I got through it although it felt like some kind of outer body experience at the time.

We watched and listened to more and more guitar players perform and then waited to hear the final 3 winners.

I came in second. Unbelievable!

They told me afterwards that my thumb appeared a few times on top of the guitar neck and the points deducted for that kept me from winning.

I should have been happy with my placement, but I had lost, and in front of Nadine.

I remember that 1 hour and 20-minute ride back home like it was yesterday.

That Saturday, during all of that time - I really never said much to Nadine. We'd just look at each other from time to time and smile.

Back at school I thought how could I face her? I had lost! Nadine was a year ahead of me and we were never in the same class. I would just see her in the hallways as she worked in the cafeteria. How could I face her? How could I buy my chocolate milk in the cafeteria where she worked?

And there I was asking her for a chocolate milk like she hadn't experienced that recital of mine. She gave me that same beautiful smile and said: "don't worry about it, I'll pay for it."

Do you think I clued in? Not me.

Each day passed those last months of school and she paid for my chocolate milk every day. Never did I have the courage to ask her out, or just see where things could have gone.

The next year she didn't return. I was told she went to E.D. Feehan High School, another high school in our city.

Never again would I see that beautiful smile, that Nadine again.

Ah, life...

Oh, life is bigger, yes, it's bigger and when Everett Larson was younger than both Nadine & I he was forced to become far more mature. At the age of 14 his father was tragically killed in a farming accident. A young Everett wasn't allowed to experience walking down a school hallway. He couldn't romanticize in a classroom. Being the oldest in the Larson family, he had to quit school and work the farm to provide for his younger siblings and family. He would do this for a long period of time before being able to pursue his goals with music. One was opening his own music school.

At the tribute concert held on Sunday, January 5, 2020, for Everett Larson was a full house of people with stories just like mine. You also knew that there were thousands of other people he had touched during his time here.

I always hoped that Nadine found her voice. Her life's calling. That her smile reached thousands of other people like it had profoundly touched my existence that year.

At the age of 87, my mother departed months before this tribute concert for Everett Larson. Like Mr. Larson, she faced a traumatic event with the loss of her husband. She was 36. I was 5.

Like Mr. Larson, my own father had to quit school at the tender age of 14 to work and provide further income for his parents and family.

Each of us will mature at different stages during life. Sadly, for my mother, her father was an alcoholic and was very abusive towards her and his other daughter and son and he never matured. He didn't have the patience of my guitar teacher, Gerald. He didn't bestow the generosity and kindness of Nadine. He wasn't always there like my mother was for me. He suffered a stroke and couldn't speak his remaining months, and it was like a metaphor, for he never learned how to show and to speak of love throughout his life.

He didn't understand how to build a stairway to heaven.

I can still picture the wear of torment from her father and the loss of my father etched upon my mother's face at our family kitchen table, with the phone book open, and her making that phone call to book my first guitar lesson. Not fully knowing that her selfless act from that moment would not only lead to lessons in music but it would also open up my mind to these dedicated life hours and lessons in life!

Dedicated to Everett Alfred Larson, April 5, 1926 - July 2, 2019.

Miles Patrick Yohnke, at the age of 15, practicing for the 1979 Saskatchewan guitar recital

If you would like to know what happened to me the following year, I have written an article titled: "School's Out?" Please click here.

If you would like to know what happened to me the year after that year, I have written an article titled: "The Kiss of Life." Please click here.

If you'd like to learn more about Doris Merkosky, I have written an article titled: "Sight & Sound." Please click here.