HANDCRAFTED MEMORIES
Iwas born and raised in a small Kentucky town, but now live quite a different life in a Brooklyn brownstone with my husband. When I moved here 10 years ago, I brought very little with me: a suitcase, a couple of books and my cherished Appalachian dulcimer.
I made this dulcimer from scratch when I was a student at Berea College in Kentucky, a school that encourages its students to study and explore Appalachian skills. Dulcimers, stringed instruments not well known outside the Appalachian region, are an important part of traditional music there.
Music has always been a part of my family. My grandmother Ree-Ree played piano and my grandpa Tams played guitar and harmonica. ReeRee’s sister Frankie played an electric autoharp called an Omnichord. Aunt Frankie gave me her vintage Suzuki Omnichord, which I still play today.
I knew right away I wanted to incorporate the oak from Ree-Ree’s white picket fence into my dulcimer. Ree-Ree lived on Main Street in our hometown of Henderson, Kentucky, and her yard was a magical paradise with her many pink flamingos, plastic squirrels, concrete bears and other animals. She once even asked Tams to dig her a pond. He gave her a very large mirror instead. “This should do the trick,” he said. He was right. She put the mirror down in the yard, surrounded it with painted rocks, and called it a pond.
After my grandparents had passed away, my dad saved the oak fence posts to use for some of his own woodworking projects. Since oak is not a great wood for sound, I used walnut and cherry for the body of my dulcimer. But I incorporated Ree-Ree’s oak fence by creating wood inlays on both the fretboard and the scroll-style head.
I’ve played guitar since I was 18, so picking up the dulcimer and playing by ear wasn’t hard. Today, even though my dear grandmother and her magical yard are no longer with us, I am still able strum up those beloved Kentucky memories in my New York City living room.