For the love of it

He has heart and three guitars.

76-year-old Don Greening of Musgravetown never really was a musician per se, but music is what made him the man he is today.

With moose on the stove he ducks back and forth from the kitchen to the guitar in the dinette, as light on his feet as a man not half his age.

If he's not strumming something or singing then he's likely whistling to the wind, tending to his chickens at the back of the house. There's a steady rhythm from the days of Don Williams still inside the man, keeping him well spirited, plucking him like an old golden string.

He was 17 when his parents and seven siblings had all moved away to the mainland, leaving him to move in with his wife Daisy and her parents. Around this time he bought his very first guitar. He didn't know how to tune it, nor did anyone else. After a while he got himself a songbook of Wilf Carter songs, and a pipe tuner.

"There was one of Wilf's songs, I wouldn't know which one if my life depended on it, but I had it right down pat. There was a concert in the old Irish lodge and I went down there and sung this song. They clapped and clapped. They wanted me to come back but I couldn't come back, it was the only one I knew." Don recalls.

"Once he started playing he couldn't stop, nearly drove everybody crazy with it," kids his wife of 57 years.

Back in those days Don says he could pick up the guitar and hours would go by before he laid it down again.

"I could sing till my head dropped off."

Fortunately for everyone around him, Don can sing. He plays the old country western songs the way they were meant to be played, with a smile on his face and a warm shiver in his throat.

Music was in his family - all of his brothers and sisters sing and play something. His mother used to be the organist at church.

It wasn't long after his family left for the mainland that Don started a family of his own. On his 19th birthday his wife had a baby boy. At that time, work was scarce and it was far from easy to get by.

"While the kids were growing up I spent a lot of time away working. They didn't even know me when I got back most times. We've seen a lot of ups and downs, seen a lot of changes... more than you'll ever see again. We went from a kerosene light up to the jet ages, yes we've seen some changes in our lifetime."

Could make them cry

Don spent a lot of time working in the "lumber woods." He used to take the guitar along with him.

"That was the only entertainment we had in the lumber camp then. I remember the year I spent in Labrador. There were a lot of Americans there and they used to come and take me out of the bunk in the nighttime and carry me to their bunkhouse. They'd sit me down and say 'now sing.' They knew all the songs. They were so homesick, I could see them crying like babies while I played."

"One night I was there singing my heart out and this fellow comes up to me and says 'my son, you should be on the radio, at least then we'd be able to turn you off'."

Don spent the years of his twenties rambling from one job to the next. Whenever he knew things were settled away at home he was gone. When there was enough food to eat and the wood was all cut, he hit the railroad again in search of another job. The guitar always came with him.

"I sat down in the dark corner of a train station one night waiting for a train, and started playing a few songs. When I finished I couldn't get up for the beer bottles surrounding me. There were dozens of beer bottles, from people trying to keep me playing, thinking I was drinking what they laid there. I didn't even drink at the time."

Like it does for so many when life gets too busy, his love for the instrument eventually began to wane and Don found himself leaving the guitar at home. He started into driving trucks. The guitar remained in a closed case and didn't get touched. Eventually it was sold. He can't explain why or how he let the music go, just says it wasn't in him anymore.

And the song goes...

Thirty years passed before he picked it up again.

"My daughter brought home a fellow from the southern shore, and he had a guitar with him. He loved to play and sing; he'd play at six in the morning if you woke him out of bed. It turned me right on to it again and I bought a new guitar right away."

Nowadays Don sings more gospel music than country western. He still has trenches pushed deep into his fingers from the strings, but only out of habit. Being so used to the hard strings of his old guitar he can't help but apply the same pressure to his three new acoustic six-strings, even though he doesn't have to.

Life these days is not the struggle it used to be and making music fits easier into the schedule, now that Don has retired.

He still finds himself playing for funerals and church services here and there, and entertains company on a regular basis. He also cherishes any opportunity to share the gift of music with those interested.

"There was a young girl delivering The Packet here a couple years ago, Heather Morgan was her name. I was playing guitar on the chesterfield one night and she came in with the paper.

"The way she looked at the guitar I could tell she was interested in it, and so I asked her if she played. She said 'no' and so I offered to teach her if she liked. So I taught her how to play. Easter Sunday morning came and she joined me in church."

Don's philosophy is simple and beautiful.

"Everything I want to see is around me, the country and the water is all there."

He raises his own livestock and grows his own vegetables, all in the backyard. He bottles his own wine - rhubarb and red currant. He keeps himself busy no matter what.

For the first time in a lot of years, Don is once again taking his guitar on the road with him. He's been asked to play for the folks at the Clarenville Retirement Center this evening, April 14.

"I can't say no; if someone asks me to play I got to say yes."

gsimms@thepacket.ca