JANUARY 31, 2021 – Grandpa Nilsson would’ve turned 130 today. He died long ago, but his influences thrive. The greatest was musical, with hardscrabble origins.
Grandpa’s mother died when he was 18 months old, a month following his infant sister’s death. Grandpa’s immigrant father, Johan, carried on, working 16-hour days as a Minneapolis streetcar conductor and leaving his toddler son in the care of who-knows-who.
For years father and son lived, ate at boarding houses; not until Johan retired did he own a home. For the better part of his youth, Grandpa was unsupervised, which often led to trouble. He told us of his closest call.
At age 10, Grandpa and a friend were playing down by the Mississippi above St. Anthony Falls, where jamming the river were thousands of logs—sent downstream by lumbermen denuding lands north. Soon the boys discovered the sport of log-hopping. A short while later, Grandpa slipped and fell noggin first into the murky water, stunning himself on a submerged log.
That would’ve been the end of Grandpa . . . with no beginning for Dad and further generations, but for a quick-thinking log driver who, from a distance, had witnessed Grandpa’s nosedive. The driver rushed to the rescue.
Once Grandpa had recovered his senses, the man delivered stern words. Decades later, as we listened with a mix of fear and amusement, Grandpa recalled the warning: “Don’t ever let me catch you again playing down here!”
If Grandpa and his buddy heard “down here,” they apparently thought it would be okay to play farther downstream—specifically, the railroad trestle below the Franklin Avenue Bridge. And to be doubly safe, they shimmied across the iron girders 50 feet above the water.
Word of Grandpa’s escapades found their way to overworked Johan. What to do with an adventurous, unsupervised 10-year-old? Naturally: you scrimp to buy him . . . tremolo, tremolo . . . a violin and lessons!
I have no idea how the “adventurous, unsupervised 10-year-old” took to the easiest instrument to play horribly. He must’ve had extraordinary instruction plus inner desire and discipline, not to mention musical proclivity. He became a professional, playing in the pit orchestra of local silent movie theaters. When “talkies” ended that gig, Grandpa opened a music school and even in the depths of the Depression, gave weekly lessons to more than 60 students.
When I was 10, I fell off the musical log; rebelled against the violin. Grandpa rushed to the scene. He didn’t coax or plea or appeal to my latent sense of expression or aesthetics. With the log-driver’s sternness, he lectured me about how the violin had saved his life; not only from escapades by the river but in France during WW I, where his reputation as a violinist rescued him from mortal danger.
If by Grandpa’s musical influence his (safe, supervised) progeny would luxuriate in the expressive aesthetics of violin-playing, Grandpa’s relationship with the instrument remained fundamentally practical; twice over, it’d saved him—saved us.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa, and . . . thanks for practicing!
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
