Worth the Wait

When I was a little girl, we would go to Gramma and Grampa Lamb's house often in the summer.  (That's Grandma and Grandpa Crissman, for those of you wondering - my mom's folks).  They lived on a farm with angus cattle, Guinea hens, sheep, goats, chickens, a multitude of infamous cats (including the renowned Shoester), the best fetchin' dog Cobber (an Autstrailian Blue Healer) and a few Gordon Setters to round up the rabble.  There was (OK, I should say is, but things are so different now since Gramma passed in '01 and we all aren't as young as we used to be), anyway, there was a fabulous swimming pool, complete with diving board and super scary bathhouse - scary because the mice took it over long before I became self-aware. (Currently, there is an semi-empty swimming pool, containing snow and rain collections and a random assortment of frogs, muck, and unfortunates.  Ew.) But best of all, even surpassing the pool in it's heyday, was The Den.  At the back of the house, with shutter-style doors just beyond Grampa's favorite rocker was a musty dusty room with a quasi-tuned honkey-tonk piano, piles of magazines, guns and underneath stacks of books and boxes the best treasure I've ever found.  

A vibraphone.

We would unearth it at every opportunity, removing the new stacks of periodicals that found rest on it's table like top and flicking the keys with our small dirty fingers. We would send out search parties for the home-made mallets- usually a super ball stuck on the end of a wooden dowel.  We would plink away in that little room until the cows came home ;D

Not long after I met Robbie (before we were dating/courting), I asked Grampa what had become of the vibraphone, day-dreaming of reclaiming it from table-hood and becoming skilled enough to play in front of strangers!  He said I could have it and I was quick to pick it up and bring it home.  Upon setting it up in my very cramped studio apartment, I discovered that the motor was broken. :(  

Vibes are like a xylophone, except they have a neato motor that spins a disc inside the resonant tube below each key - this creates an singularly eerie and awesome sound, which sets the vibes apart!  You can also keep the motor off, and play them like a regular xylophone.  

I brought the motor to my super-skilled Pa and asked him to figure it out for me, and we were fairly despondent.  The housing was cracked and a doohickey inside was loose and clacking around.  Worst of all, it was comprised of "pot metal" which is too weak to re-weld... now forgive me, I am drawing up "facts" from 5+ years ago and could be telling you the story all wrong, as far as broken-motor-details go... my memory is notoriously bad... :o/ ... but you get the idea.  Broken motor = no vibing for Jes.  Little did I realize that the motor was attached to the frame of the instrument, so in giving it to my dad to fix, I was unable to set it up to play in the mean time.  Little did anyone realize, the guy who had the skills to fix it would take nigh on FOREVER to get the job done.  

Today, I got the motor back.

Today, I played my vibraphone.

You should be jealous.  And then, you should get over yourself and come over and play it too!!!  We need to buy some real mallets, and replace a rubber ring that either went missing or broke 5 years ago, I just don't know. Meanwhile, wooden dowels wrapped in electrical tape and a rubber band are sufficient.

Look out, world.