Piano man adds magic to YosemiteFiled: 03/21/2000 3/18/00 By Herb Benham
Last weekend, Yosemite, the Wawona Hotel and a piano player named Tom
Bopp.
I don't think you want to go to Yosemite in the summer. People
say it's a mess. It's Disneyland. If I want to go to
Disneyland, I'll go -- and I'm not sure I want to go.
Yosemite with snow. Yosemite with cold, clean air. Yosemite
with people, but fewer. That's Yosemite in the winter.
We stayed at the Wawona. Built in 1879, you could have pictured
Teddy Roosevelt bounding down the steps on his way to track mountain
lions.
Accommodations were spare, but neat. Bathrooms are downstairs and
communal for those who don't have them in their rooms, like we did.
Friday night we had a room supper of pate, mushroom brie, summer
sausage and French bread from Trader Joe's. After supper, we walked
to the main lodge, where people were sitting in the great room in front of
the fire playing cards, reading and listening to a man named Tom Bopp play
the piano.
Before motels started building little bitty lobbies -- or big sterile
ones -- and travelers holed up in their rooms, the grand hotels and
National Parks had sitting rooms where people gathered.
This was before TV. People met. Visited. Played
cards, read, listened to the piano. The same kinds of things people
were doing Friday night at the Wawona.
TV is not sociable. It forces people inside. Inside their
rooms. Inside themselves.
Live music brings people together. We sat 15 feet away from Bopp
and his Knabe parlor-grand piano. A mason jar rested on top of the
piano.
A dozen people were scattered around the room. A mother holding
her daughter. A young couple with valentines in their eyes. A
European traveler or two.
Bopp played Irish songs. Not only "Danny Boy," but
songs by the poet Robert Burns like "Ca' The Yowes" and "A
Red, Red Rose." The more he played, the quieter the room
became. Those who weren't paying attention, started to.
Each song rolled through the room like a Mercedes off an assembly
line. The songs were masterpieces any way you looked at them.
Serendipity. It's better than money. It's being there when
something good happens. In this case, Irish music.
If heaven is worth its swirly clouds, then there has to be a place for
the artists who play their hearts out for a dozen people and a waiter
who's just hoping to get another cappuccino order.
Without people like Bopp, some music would never be heard, books would
never be read and paintings would never be seen.
Music did what music does. For a minute, a dozen people stopped
chasing their tails. Tucked their tails underneath them, sat and
listened. Unconcerned about the past, unworried about the future, the
audience finally kept its date with the present. Monday morning before
school, Thomas stubbed his middle toe on the refrigerator. Those
things hurt so bad you can't talk them down. Not his mom, not his dad,
not even chocolate muffins could stop the flow of tears. I put on
"A Red, Red Rose," the second song on Bopp's CD. Within a
few seconds the tears stopped and Thomas became still. Art is not only
capable of stopping time. It can ease the pain, too. Without
it, more than our middle toes would hurt. |