We had a long weekend in January, and there was a lot of driving.
Saturday morning we drove (4 hours) to Houston for our niece, Shelly's, baptism (in our faith we baptize children at age 8).
It was honestly a bit nostalgic for me because her family lives and attends church in my first area where I served my mission, my apartment was around the corner from that church building. The baptism was nice and it was good to spend the time with family.
We attended church with them the next day and then drove (1 hour) to College Station to spend Monday there, we had an appointment....
Here is the long story:
Stephen is an accomplished violinist. In High School he got all sorts of accolades, and his teacher, Harold Turbyfill, LOVED him. In all his years of teaching, Stephen is one of his favorites.
In the McKneely family, violins are kind of our specialty. Stephen's great grandfather apparently played the violin too but we didn't know this until recently. His violin resurfaced and his grandfather had it. It was in bad shaped and needed fixing. He asked Stephen's mom if she knew how to get it fixed.
She did, Mr. Turbyfill is now retired but in his retirement has opened a shop where he fixes stringed instruments. Susan takes the violin to him. He explains that he's only willing to fix violins that will actually get played. She promises that if he fixes it, the violin will be played. He pushes it and asks if STEPHEN will play this violin. Susan promises that Stephen will indeed play this violin. Mr. Turbyfill then takes it a bit further and insists that if Stephen's going to play this violin then it's going to need a new bow (which indeed was a need, the one that the violin had was in awful shape). She agreed that he would need one and just asked him to pick one out. He, however, insisted that Stephen needed to pick out his own bow. (Now if you ask me, I think he was trying to finagle a way to see Stephen--and who could blame him?)
So our "appointment" on Monday morning was to go to the shop and let Stephen pick out a bow. The shop was closed but of course Mr. Turbyfill met us and we spent a lovely 2 hours with him. Stephen was a bit rusty at first but it all came back pretty quickly. And he played probably 20 different bows until he settled on a nice one. Carl and Susan took the kids for a tour of downtown Bryan while we visited and Stephen played.
He also took us on a tour of his workshop upstairs, and for this Kaitlyn and Sam joined us, Sam really got into seeing the tools and parts and figuring out how things work, and Mr. Turbyfill gave him one of his violins he uses for parts--he was on cloud nine!
And it was so nice to meet Mr. Turbyfill he told us that seeing Stephen "made his day, well actually a lot of days." Stephen said it best when he said for him to see Stephen doing well, with a family and happy was a measure of his life's work, a teacher's payday. And I was so proud of Stephen for sacrificing so much to do something nice to make Mr. Turbyfill happy.
But then comes MORE driving, because we had to fulfill the "promise" of Stephen playing THE violin. During the Christmas holiday, Susan took the repaired violin to show it to Grandpa McKneely, it's repair was his Christmas present. She assumed she'd just take it home with her for Stephen to choose his bow and then play it. But Grandpa McKneely wouldn't let it out of his sight, he had plans to learn to play it and wanted to keep it, so in order for the "promise" made to Mr. Turbyfill to be kept, it required us to drive (2 hours) to Nacogdoches, to Grandpa McKneely and give him a private concert of sorts with Stephen playing his father's violin with the new bow. Which we did.
We enjoyed a nice visit with Grandpa McKneely, went out to dinner at Cici's Pizza (it's his thing to do with his family when they come to visit) and then headed home, driving another 3.5 hours.
In the end, Grandpa McKneely has decided not to take up the violin, so it's in the possession of Susan who is charged with either learning to play or finding someone to play it, my money is on Sam, who I think would make a GREAT violinist.
And while it was a lot of driving, it was the right thing to do, we made a lot of people happy.
Saturday morning we drove (4 hours) to Houston for our niece, Shelly's, baptism (in our faith we baptize children at age 8). It was honestly a bit nostalgic for me because her family lives and attends church in my first area where I served my mission, my apartment was around the corner from that church building. The baptism was nice and it was good to spend the time with family.
We attended church with them the next day and then drove (1 hour) to College Station to spend Monday there, we had an appointment....
Here is the long story:
Stephen is an accomplished violinist. In High School he got all sorts of accolades, and his teacher, Harold Turbyfill, LOVED him. In all his years of teaching, Stephen is one of his favorites.
In the McKneely family, violins are kind of our specialty. Stephen's great grandfather apparently played the violin too but we didn't know this until recently. His violin resurfaced and his grandfather had it. It was in bad shaped and needed fixing. He asked Stephen's mom if she knew how to get it fixed.
She did, Mr. Turbyfill is now retired but in his retirement has opened a shop where he fixes stringed instruments. Susan takes the violin to him. He explains that he's only willing to fix violins that will actually get played. She promises that if he fixes it, the violin will be played. He pushes it and asks if STEPHEN will play this violin. Susan promises that Stephen will indeed play this violin. Mr. Turbyfill then takes it a bit further and insists that if Stephen's going to play this violin then it's going to need a new bow (which indeed was a need, the one that the violin had was in awful shape). She agreed that he would need one and just asked him to pick one out. He, however, insisted that Stephen needed to pick out his own bow. (Now if you ask me, I think he was trying to finagle a way to see Stephen--and who could blame him?)
So our "appointment" on Monday morning was to go to the shop and let Stephen pick out a bow. The shop was closed but of course Mr. Turbyfill met us and we spent a lovely 2 hours with him. Stephen was a bit rusty at first but it all came back pretty quickly. And he played probably 20 different bows until he settled on a nice one. Carl and Susan took the kids for a tour of downtown Bryan while we visited and Stephen played.
He also took us on a tour of his workshop upstairs, and for this Kaitlyn and Sam joined us, Sam really got into seeing the tools and parts and figuring out how things work, and Mr. Turbyfill gave him one of his violins he uses for parts--he was on cloud nine!And it was so nice to meet Mr. Turbyfill he told us that seeing Stephen "made his day, well actually a lot of days." Stephen said it best when he said for him to see Stephen doing well, with a family and happy was a measure of his life's work, a teacher's payday. And I was so proud of Stephen for sacrificing so much to do something nice to make Mr. Turbyfill happy.
But then comes MORE driving, because we had to fulfill the "promise" of Stephen playing THE violin. During the Christmas holiday, Susan took the repaired violin to show it to Grandpa McKneely, it's repair was his Christmas present. She assumed she'd just take it home with her for Stephen to choose his bow and then play it. But Grandpa McKneely wouldn't let it out of his sight, he had plans to learn to play it and wanted to keep it, so in order for the "promise" made to Mr. Turbyfill to be kept, it required us to drive (2 hours) to Nacogdoches, to Grandpa McKneely and give him a private concert of sorts with Stephen playing his father's violin with the new bow. Which we did.We enjoyed a nice visit with Grandpa McKneely, went out to dinner at Cici's Pizza (it's his thing to do with his family when they come to visit) and then headed home, driving another 3.5 hours.
In the end, Grandpa McKneely has decided not to take up the violin, so it's in the possession of Susan who is charged with either learning to play or finding someone to play it, my money is on Sam, who I think would make a GREAT violinist.
And while it was a lot of driving, it was the right thing to do, we made a lot of people happy.
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