My Violin, my favorite possession.
When I was about six my parents took me to a classical concert that showcased violin players of all ages and the last were kids that were all my age. I found out years later that my parents had planned this excursion in hope that I would be interested in violin and would ask to start. It worked and I started asking if I could start when I was in second grade. That summer I was cleaning my grandma’s attic when I came across the violin.
It was in a tattered, old, reddish brow case. I though it was an odd shape and picked it up to take downstairs. It was relatively light, so I didn’t know weather there was even anything inside of the case. I took it to my dad and he opened it. He didn’t know how it had gotten up there or whose it was, so he went to my grandma with the old instrument. She said that someone had given it to my grandfather as a gift at one time and that he had never really played it. I thought the old violin was marvelous looking. A dark brown with small scratches from years of use made it look ancient. There was no bridge on the violin and all of the strings were too old to use.
We took the instrument home and my parents took it into Kepharts to be appraised and then fixed up. They gave the estimate, about one thousand dollars for the violin and the bow together. We thought that was a pretty expensive violin at the time even though its worth wasn’t really relevant.
That fall I started taking violin from a man named Eric Sessions in Decorah. I had to go into Kepharts one again in order to rent a smaller sized violin because of my small stature. Violins come in multiple sizes due to the fact that kids start at a very young age and cant reach all of the intervals on the full sized violin. I started with a 3/4th size and eventually moved up to the violin we had found. I played on that violin for almost seven years.
In February of this year we decided that we were going to start the hunt for a new violin. I had outgrown the tone that my old one could produce. We decided that we would go and ask about what I should be looking for. We started out by going to Reck Violin shop in Iowa City. Upon arrival to the shop, I felt a certain giddiness. I had never been to a violin shop before and was very excited.
I walked in the door and looked around. There were violins, violas and cellos. Mr. Reck walked over to me to help me and I asked for a few violins to try out. He grabbed about seven off of the wall and gave me a few bows. My hands started to sweat and at first I didn’t know how to approach the table full of instruments. After about a minute of looking I finally got the courage to pick up a violin and a bow. As I played, I noticed the major sound difference between the new and the old. I tried out all of them and my parents told me we were going to move on to the next store. So we thanked Mr. Reck and left.
We went to the next store that was located in a strange place in Cedar Rapids. The name of the store is Schultz Strings and when entering the building it seems as if you are entering an apartment and you wonder how any good quality instrument could be sold there, but when you talk to Mr. Shultz your mind is changed instantly. He immediately asked me what my instrument preferences were and which tones I liked over others. He brought violin after violin and helped me figure out which tone I liked and which instrument would fit me the best.
After about forty-five minutes my mind had been blown several times over and I looked at the violins he had narrowed down to. One had been made in France in 1840 and I loved it. We decided to take it home for a week to test out and see how I liked it. I fell in love with the sound and the look and the feel of the instrument but it was out of our price range by quite a bit. We called him and told him this and he said he would see what he could do with a couple of other “fiddles” he had in mind. I went back that Saturday thinking I might try a few violins out and not realizing that I would be coming home with my own, new and beautiful violin.
He had worked and fitted seven violins to the sound that I liked and prepared them for me to try. I tried all of them but kept coming back to the newer instrument because of its bright lovely tone. My mom looked at me and asked me if I really loved it and I told her yes, still not knowing if I was going to be able to get it. She then said that if I really loved it then I should probably get it. So that is how I came to have my most prized possession, my violin.