Episode 27: GoGo and Me II

When I’m young and go to visit Grandmother, I sometimes stay a few nights. Grandmother loves Lawrence Welk and when I’m staying over a Saturday night, his show is a must. She unconsciously mimics his accent: “Oh, isn’t he wunnerful?!” Her favorite part of the show is when he picks an elderly lady out of the audience and dances with her.

Lawrence Welk with his signature bubbles. When he died, he was one of the wealthiest entertainers in the country.

Lawrence Welk is credited with inventing ‘Champagne Music.’ It squeezes in between Big Band and Rock ‘n Roll on the timeline of music history. He is born on a farm in North Dakota but his distinctive accent comes from his parents, immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine. He doesn’t learn English until his early 20s but he starts playing his father’s old accordion at a young age. He essentially becomes a benign indentured servant to his parents, agre to work on their farm until he is 21 in exchange for them buying him a professional accordion for about $400.

For 20 years, Welk successfully plays gigs around the Midwest as the leader of a traveling orchestra. Somewhere, he acquires a music degree. Eventually making his way to Los Angeles, his show is picked up by ABC in 1955. It is canceled in 1971, and Welk arranges to syndicate the show himself. It is on the air for another 11 years.

By the time he dies in 1992, Lawrence Welk is one of the richest entertainers in the country.[1]

Sometimes, if you’re unlucky, Grandmother will be in her living room when you come downstairs after using the bathroom.

“Did you have a nice BM?” she’ll ask pointedly.

What the. . .? No one else ever asks me such a thing. I decide from the beginning to launch a misinformation campaign, answering ‘yes’ if I hadn’t and ‘no’ if I had.

When I visit, Grandmother will often pull out her jewelry to show me. The vast majority of her collection is good quality costume jewelry, many of which are gifts she’s received that have never been taken out of the box. When she dies and I inherit the jewelry, we lay costume stuff piece by piece around the perimeter of our basement, filling all four walls. She has a number of fine pieces, though. She wears a ring with a large aquamarine, which she promises to everyone.

Invariably, she says to me, “Why don’t you pick something you want, honey, to take home.”

Upon my choosing something, she’ll say, “No, I’m not ready to give that away. Take this,” handing me something completely different.

She gives me a gold garnet ring with pretty engraving on the band. She says she found it years before on the sidewalk downtown. When I turn the ring over, I see an inscription with two sets of initials. So I ask her how long she’d tried to find the owner of the ring, Chambersburg being a relatively small town. Grandmother looks at me as if I am mad.

“Find the owner?! They lost it.” That logic, if you can call it that, doesn’t work for me, but obviously does for her.

[1] Lawrence Welk Is Born, Editor, History.com