CIVIL WAR MUSIC MISAPPLIED, STILL EFFECTIVE

When something good happens that we can see and hear and feel emotionally its effect goes on and on like the waves in a boundless pool of water when a rock is dropped in. Such was the effect of the TV mini-series, Civil War. If anything good came out of that war besides the end of slavery, it has been the review of this dismal affair on this series which has reinforced our national, although unofficial, vow to "never again."

The series touched people to the core. And, in my opinion, it was the music, so often by a single stringed instrument, that did it. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Grounds," "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys," played slowly on a low-voiced violin, or plucked on a banjo, each note seeming to quiver in the air, reached our inner beings as no music has recently. It was sweet-sad and penetrating.

Now, have you noticed that TV advertisers have picked little snatches of the songs, played in the same manner, to accompany their sales promotion? Some smart advertising person ha~s been at work. Working around the house, picking up, dusting, etc., I'll hear a bar or two of that haunting music and will look at the screen, almost automatically, to see what's going on. Sometimes I'm a little annoyed if some frivolous product is being pushed to a few notes of "John Brown's Body Lies a'Mouldering in the Grave."

Other times, on a different wave, hearing such snatches of songs, I'm instantly transported back to our one-room rural school. The whole motley little crew are gathered up close around an out-of-tune piano singing, "Tra~mp, Tramp, Tramp The Boys Are Marching," or "Dixie." Those old Civil War songs were in the standard yellow-backed song books nearly every school had then. My, how lustily we sang. If it was before cold weather when the windows were open, butterflies and wasps wandered in to see what was going on and once an outraged blue jay flew in causing us to miss a beat or two. But, being more raucous than him, he soon found the opened windows on the other side of the house.

In a more thoughtful mood, when I hear, "His soul goes marching on," I, mentally, stand before the grave of my grandfather, Moses Casey, and see the little stone marker put up by the Union Army, denoting his contribution to the noble effort. He was not killed in the war, lived on to be an old man, but died before I was born. Still, when I stand before that grave I seem to see a young soldier, tramp, tramp, tramping off to the Battle of Pilot Knob.

Another wave caused by that TV series is the rush by history teachers to secure the film of that production to present to their students when those chapters, "The War Between The States," come up in their classes. It is an objective presentation, superbly narrated and touches the senses more thoroughly than any mere reading from a textbook that says, "At the Battle of Gettysburg, the decisive battle of the War ~Between The States, there were 23,003 Union losses, 28,451 Confederate losses." However, one teacher tells me the commercials must be deleted, else the students may pay as much or more attention to them.

You might wonder why, after many months of the original TV presentation, I'm just now writing these thoughts. It's just that almost daily I'm riding on one of those waves it causes when I hear a few of those low, slow, touching strains of music and look at the screen to see what's being advertised. Sometimes, like the enraged blue jay, I feel like flying out the window. You wouldn't play "Hail, Hail, the Gang's all Here," while "into the Valley of Death rode the 600."

REJOICE!