The school year is winding down.  The day custodian is using up his vacation time, so Roger’s been called off his regular 3 pm shift at Amherst Elementary to handle the day.

‘Don’t mind me if I’m cranky,’ says the compact gentleman, no taller than a fourth grader.  ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

The man’s grin belies his claim to crankiness as he goes to fetch a flatbed cart to haul my gear.  We truck out to my car where he calmly grabs my heaviest stuff and we begin to talk shop.

‘You got a Martin guitar in there?’ he asks, eyeing my duct taped case.  I’m not surprised at all to hear my school schlepping partners talk about the music they subsidize with the day job or, in this case, evening.

Roger, from Kentucky, pronounces acoustic ‘a-cue-stic’ and says he plays a little guitar, a lot of mandolin and even some banjo.  His wife is a keyboardist and he plays in 3 or 4 bands with and without her.  We talk sound equipment, Martin vs. Taylor, performing for non-existent audiences and the built-in ones at church, a favored venue for Roger.  I don’t think he says ‘perform’ - he’s a player; music is his instrument; listeners are a bonus.

Once we get inside, after he asks what he can do to help set up and I say I’ve got it from here, he’d like to check out my Martin.  As usual, I try to hedge, since this particular guitar’s my baby like no other and he is, for all his kindliness, still a stranger.

‘I’ll be getting it out anyway in a minute,’ I temporize, thinking I’ll have a more supervisory pose once my PVC banner stand is standing.

‘I might get called away by then,’ he reasons, unlatching the case and cradling my first born with fatherly ease.  He plays a lovely bit, declares it ‘in tune’ and re-secures the instrument.

'I'm surprised you bring your Martin into schools,' he says.

‘And I think you’re holding out on me, about playing a little,’ I say, crouching to the task of props and costumes.  We talk about my Cincinnati roots, right over the river from his folks; the whole time he’s on one knee, like a knight before a queen.  I wonder if he hunkers down because he knows so well the great divide devised by the tall, towering over the small.

After back to back Ohio history assemblies, Roger and I do it all in reverse, by now two musician sidekicks after a gig.  I ask if he knows of an ice cream place nearby.  He gives me directions as though I live in town, peppering the turns with landmarks I’ve never seen.  Well after he goes inside to set up the gym for lunch, I’ve gotten lost and found again here at the local Dairy Twist.  I’m thinking over the morning to the tune of the best medium chocolate soft serve in a cup I’ve ever tasted.  I figure, it must be the company.

Roger that.

Public domain photo B. Moses & Son, Tulane Mandolin Club 1896