My parents purchased a maple spinet piano from Jenkins Music Co. in Kansas City when I was eight, and I immediately began piano lessons with Mrs. Eva Metzgar. Mrs. Metzgar was the town’s piano and voice teacher, and I spent many hours in her care over the years. What a stickler she was!
At times, especially in cold weather, my mother would drive me to piano lessons; otherwise, I would ride my bike, dreading the very steep driveway that led to her lovely brick home at the top of a hill in northeast Gallatin.
$1 for 45 Minutes
She charged $1 for 45 minutes, and sometimes it seemed like hours, especially if I hadn’t properly practiced my “homework.” Mrs. Metzgar would put little red ink dots on the tips of my fingers to ensure I was touching the keys with my fingertips. She also told me that inside my hands were tiny bunnies, and if I let my fingers fall–as I was likely to do–they would be smashed!
Practicing at home was a chore, I admit. Mother insisted I practice for an hour after school. “What? I want to go play with Gayle and the McWilliams kids or walk over to Jan’s house,” I’d say. But no matter.
I was a piano student and had to practice. The piano was in the living room, and I had to finish by 5 o’clock because Dad would want to watch the news (Huntley and Brinkley) on television when he got home. We only had one room for the piano, TV and couch–no family room and no music room. And I mostly was practicing scales and arpeggios, not the kind of music my father envisioned when he bought the piano.
Mother knew that Mrs. Metzgar would be annoyed if I arrived the next week unpracticed. And Mom always said she wasn’t wasting money on piano lessons if I wasn’t going to practice, even at $1 per week.
Oh, Those Scales
But melodic music was what my dad wanted. Mrs. Metzgar and my father sang in the United Methodist Church choir together, which always made me a little nervous. Apparently she didn’t discuss students, though, thank goodness. However, my father occasionally would ask when I’d quit playing scales and could play what he called “real music.” She would smile patiently, he told me, and let him know that I needed the basics before I could move to more classical piano pieces.
Mrs. Metzgar’s Grand Piano
Music lessons were given on what looked like an old upright in a tiny room surrounded by lovely windows in Mrs. Metzgar’s house. But just inside the next room, the living room, was a magnificent grand piano. On rare occasions, Mrs. Metzgar would let me play one of my pieces on that instrument. What a difference!
She also let us try out our recital pieces on the grand. And one time she had Jan Gibbens (now Johnson) and I practice a duet using that piano and the one in the music room. It seemed real uptown!
Mrs. Metzgar always seemed to be dressed the same. She would wear a nice dress, often with a lace collar, with her gray hair rolled tightly at the back and with wire-rimmed glasses. She always wore stockings with simple black lace-up shoes.
The Dreaded Recital
I took lessons from Mrs. Metzgar for nine years and participated in two recitals. The United Methodist Church provided the location. We wore Easter-best or formal gowns when we were older, and the performance pressure was immense. I still have the sheet music from my two recitals, and for many years could play them from memory.
We Were Lucky to Have Her
I didn’t appreciate this as a child, but Mrs. Metzgar came to us well educated and prepared. A native of Maryville in northwest Missouri, she graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, with a degree in voice and went on to Hinshaw Conservatory of Music from which she graduated in 1917. She then taught music and voice in the Chicago-Evanston area. She and Walter, a carpenter by trade, married in 1920. They had no children. Walter died in 1984, and Eva in 1990 at the ripe age of 96.