In Montana: the Recital At Marge's House

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Everyone calls Marguerite Hanusa "Marge," and everyone who is anyone in the high plains Montana town of Choteau comes to Marge's adult piano and organ recital every year about this time. She holds it in the parlor of her house, where she has a Story & Clark upright, a Steinway baby grand and a two-tiered Conn with a full footboard. The first townspeople to show up get to sit on folding chairs from the Methodist and Lutheran churches; the tardy in the audience must make do with the staircase and the floor. After the music the party moves into the kitchen for refreshments, and some heretofore taciturn Montanans refresh themselves into the mistaken belief that they have gifted tonsils, but this is putting the cart before the horse.

Marge is 82 years old. She was graduated from Earlham College in Indiana in 1926, and after a period of piano study in Dayton, she yielded to a love of all things western and moved to Choteau, becoming the high school music teacher in 1928. It is a ranching community -- wheat mostly -- set on rolling land studded with spruce, fir and aspen, by the eastern face of the Rockies. Its winters can get quite brutal, and now and again an old hand decides to break the monotony by taking a lesson from Marge. Even if you have no ear at all, Marge can get you over the hump with, say, Old MacDonald Had a Farm. She cannot, however, rid you of the jitters on recital day. Thereby hangs a tale.

"One of my men had a bad experience," Marge was saying just before her most recent annual recital. "He won't be playing tonight. He has a lovely touch -- such big hands -- but an audience just destroys him." His only time on the stage, this fellow fell apart. "He stayed here all day practicing. He had a Valium. Then he called the doctor. Then he had three more Valium and two double shots." As show time neared, this musician stepped out the kitchen door to relieve himself. Marge had to stop the proceedings and find him and lead him into the parlor. He played Home on the Range twelve times. Marge hissed from the kitchen, "Get to the end!" The man whined, "I passed it." Marge came out and put her arm around him. "I finally just led him off. They couldn't wake him up till 4 the next afternoon.

"And I had one man just sit down, look at the keys, get up and walk out." This time there would be no such embarrassments. Marsha and Charlie Hinch -- "They have the Foothills' men's store," Marge said -- dropped by early on the Saturday of recital to brush up. Charlie, a beginner, was to play The Oak Grove on the organ. Marsha upbraided him for not bringing his music. "I've played the son of a bitch 500 times," Charlie said. "I don't need the music." (People in Montana talk earthy, even Marge. One day Charlie was rehearsing, and, as she tells it, "he had his left hand working well, and his right hand, and he got his foot going, and I was just thrilled. I said, 'Charlie, I'm so proud of you.' And Charlie said, 'Bullshit!' ")