Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘ukulele’

More Ukulele (From Dog On It)

On this particular night, we built a fire, roasted hot dogs – Hebrew National, my favorite – and Bernie brought out the ukulele. He taught Charlie to play it a little. More than a little, in my mind – the kid was a musical genius. They sang “Up A Lazy River” and “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South.” I joined in on “Hey, Bo Diddley.”

Note from Admin to Megan and Lisa Trotter re your pop-quiz prizes – signed copies of Thereby Hangs A Tail, also stamped by Chet: please email mailing addresses to: spence.quinn@gmail.com. Also anyone who thinks a business card should have arrived by now, please do the same.

Pawnbroker, Ukulele, Us (From Thereby Hangs A Tail)

“What a beautiful instrument,” said Mr. Singh. He turned it over in his hands. “Genuine Hawaiian koa, highly flamed, Sitka spruce top braces, bone nut. Do you play?”

“A bit.”

A bit? Bernie was a master!

“Would a brief selection be possible? Anything at all.”

Of course it was possible. How about “Waltz Across Texas?” “Parachute Woman?” “Ghost Riders in the Sky?” And there was always “Surfin’ U.S.A,” guaranteed to get them up and dancing. Suddenly I was in the mood to see Mr. Singh dance. I don’t exactly dance, myself, but when dancing starts up I’m no wallflower, either, kind of confusing, the wallflower part, because I’ve often seen flowers – even flowers growing by a wall – dancing in the breeze.

We learned so much about balls yesterday!  Have to go back to it in the future, whenever that is.

RIP Ukulele Master

“You had nothing to do with anything, you say,” Bernie said to Fetzer. “Can’t get more comprehensive than that.” Fetzer blinked. Bernie can do that to people, make them blink just by saying things. As for what he’d just said, don’t come to me. 

Bernie glanced around the shop. His gaze went to a newspaper lying open on a table. He stiffened. Uh-oh. Something was up. He moved to the table, picked up the paper. His eyes moved back and forth. Human eyes do that when they’re reading. There’s something machine-like about it that bothers me. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but humans can be machine-like at times. Maybe we’ll get to that later. But right now Bernie was saying, “Oh, no – John King died.”

Fetzer’s bushy white eyebrows rose. “You’re a ukulele player?” he said.

“Not like him,” Bernie said. “I just mess around a little.”

“No one was like him,” Fetzer said. There was a silence, the kind of silence that happens when humans are thinking. “Maybe we can work something out,” Fetzer said.

Ukulele

Bernie plays the ukulele. He has a real nice one that he loves. Once we had to pawn it at Mr. Singh’s, not a good day. I think that’s in Thereby Hangs A Tail, which comes after Dog On It, but Bernie says not to mention it on account of being so far in the future, so I won’t. When It’s Sleepy Time Down South is my favorite, but I also like Stardust and Up A Lazy River. We have rivers here in the Valley – and out in the desert, too – but they’re all dry. Bernie says that when Coronado came through here some of them flowed year-round. Bernie’s no fan of Coronado. Who is Coronado, exactly? Kind of a mystery, but that’s what we do, me and Bernie, solve mysteries. It’s pretty clear Coronado’s some kind of perp, meaning one day I’ll be grabbing him by the pantleg. Case closed.