Its Polka Time

 

A Facebook friend got me started today when he posted about having been "forced" to watch the Lawrence Welk Show as a kid. Jeff, if you read this, suck it up. You seem to have survived just fine.

As children, many Boomers had the pleasure or the pain of dealing with a weekly dose of Lawrence Welk. He was the  equivalent of a Rock Star back in the day. Women wearing winged glasses and full length dresses gathered with their husbands and families in front of  black and white TV's with 15 inch screens every week to see what Lawrence had up his sleeve this time. 

Every week he offered up a mixed bag of homogenized and pasteurized American music that lifted hearts throughout the land. His show had no rough edges, no bite; it was cheese puff entertainment. And America loved it, or at least the honchos running the shows thought so.

Only Ed Sullivan's show was more popular. Of course Ed allowed the latest immoral and deviant Rock n Roll stars to actually play their devil's music in front of the whole country. Gasp, oh the horror. Lawrence was decorum and civility squared.

Although Lawrence appeared to be a pleasant man, an affable man; as a kid, I always thought there was something off about him. He never stopped with that smile during the whole show. Come on now, nobody smiles that much. Ed Sullivan never smiled that much. Matter of fact Ed did not smile much at all. 

Myron and his accordion were a weekly mainstay on Welk's show. There seemed to be at least one polka number or accordion rendition of an old standard every week.  After the Lawrence Welk show ended, Myron hit the road and performed over 200 shows a year as a solo act or with the orchestra he created. He even appeared in a music video by Kansas. 

Nationally renowned as he was, Myron never was an A-lister though. He worked hard, recorded many albums, and played every East Gish boondock venue he could find. One year he even filled the grandstand at the Acton Fair. 

I am not sure of the year, but I think it was the early 1970s that Myron made all the blue haired ladies in town swoon when he played to a packed house at the Acton Fair's grandstands which usually only saw pulling contests of the animal and mechanical kind. 

Some days after his appearance I was over to Half Way Up Farm, my Aunt Helen's place on the Witch Trot Road for some errand or chore I was to perform for her. I asked her if any of her buddies had thrown their bloomers onto the stage. 

Without missing a beat, she looked at me with the disapproving look she had mastered over 70 years of living. "They are referred today as underwear. And to answer your question; No, I saw nothing tossed on the stage, though the ladies from the Old Timer's Shop were quite giddy."

The twinkle in her eye and the slight upturn of the corners of her mouth told me she probably had one of the best times of her life that night. 

Keep it 'tween the ditches ...........................................

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And in keeping with the music of my forebears, please give a moment or two to listen to Myron at his best - "12th Street Rag" and then "Tico Tico". The man knew his way around an accordion.