The Organ

I joined the Saturday Photo Hunters with my "Arizona... But It's a dry heat" photo blog. This week's theme is "Antique". I spent all week trying to find something around me that would qualify as an antique and pretty much fell empty handed until I remembered this organ that belonged to my father in more ways than one and now sits quietly at my mom's house.

At a very young age, still living in the open country where people had no amenities of any kind and the way to earn a living was by harvesting their own crops and going to the nearest town to sell them, my father already knew that that was not the life he wanted for him and definitely not for a future wife and family.

With only three years of schooling, which in those days was the maximum they could get, he knew that knowledge was not only the way out but also the way to go. He took what little he learned and used it to his advantage.

My father was always a very spiritual man, and his faith was always his strength, while his brothers stayed and work the fields harvesting the crops he started going to town and help out with mass in every way he could.

At 15 years of age he led a youth group into Bible Studies, and became the youth leader. An uncle of his did offer to pay his way through the seminar if he wanted to be a priest but my dad had already set eyes on my mom and therefore going to the seminar was out of the question. However he kept studying and learning everything that they priests would teach him. Eventually he became "The Mass Singer" and traveled with the priest from town to town as their turn to have a priest for Sunday mass came to them. The people built this small temples for such occasions, and they knew that at least once a month they would be able to hear mass.

At some point the church acquired this little organ, in a small town such as the one that he used to live in buying new was a rarity so I figure that the little organ was already well used by others and most likely handed down to the small town church. This little organ required no batteries or electricity, it was powered by air that needed to be pumped by pressing on two foot pedals.

My father started playing with it and discovered that he could play certain notes that would go with his mass singing, imagine how he felt when he discovered that he was able to add music to singing.

When I say singing don't think of the commercial kind of singing of now, but the very humble singing of one man following his pastor. In the old days mass was always sang by the priest and the congregations would sing back to him but the addition of the special "Mass singer" was a welcomed addition to the ceremony.

Fast forward to the year 2000, a cosing of ours went to Mexico to visit his family and when he came back to his home in Las Vegas he gave my dad a call. "Tio, I have a surprise for you" he said. He told my dad that as he visited the small temple he found out that the small organ was just sitting there getting rotten and being attacked by termites, so he spoke to the priest and told him that his uncle played that little organ when he was a teenager and that if he had no objections he would like to take it to him.

So on a Saturday morning my Dad, my mom, mi chica, my daughter, and I rented a pick up truck to go to Las Vegas to pick this organ that had traveled all the way from deep sierras of Guerrero, Mexico. The funny thing was that the organ was very small and could have fit in the trunk of a small compact car with no problem at all.

My father raised us to believe in God, and gave us a strong faith. Here in Phoenix he was respected in our Church, he started Bible Studies for the Latin people and constantly butted heads with the current priests because he knew so much about our religion that in some cases he would correct them and teach them when asked. Yes, it was hard for them the accept that a simple man with schooling that didn't go beyond three years knew more than they did.

In the year 2004 my father left us for a nicer and better place, he was completely at peace with God and with his fellow men, but all of us that knew him still feel his presence today.