Busting a move at Banjo Club

Let’s just say this, we had no idea what we were getting in to. It was a pretty routine day, but that evening, Lauren, Mike, Amber and myself decided to be a little adventurous and go check out the Pittsburgh Banjo Club. Father Joe, one of the priests who lives here in the monastery where we’re staying, invited us to come to the practice of the banjo club he is in. We thought it sounded like something different but fun, so we borrowed Fr. Lucian’s car and headed across town. Well, as usual, our directions were less than perfect, so we stopped at some sketchy looking bar with their doors open to ask for directions. I wasn’t sure how they would feel about a bunch of obvious out-of-towners asking for directions to the Elk’s Club for banjo practice, but thankfully two guys near the door were awesome and knew exactly where to direct us to. When we found the right building, we walked through the front door to find a roomful of about 100 senior citizens clapping and singing along to the music of a banjo band made up of about 30 people, again, mostly senior citizens. ☺ Did I mention there was a bar too? Needless to say, we were pretty excited even before we’d heard a complete song. We bought some cheese-filled pretzels from the little concession area, ordered some beverages and sat down with the songbooks in hand so we could sing along to the music. 

It’s safe to say we stuck out like a sore thumb in this room, but we didn’t really care. The band director cracked a few jokes about our age or lack thereof, and he even let Fr. Joe introduce us to the entire room despite the fact he’s generally apprehensive about giving a Priest time on the mic. ☺ At intermission, we had many visitors stop by our table to say hello and give us their blessings. Fr. Joe sat with us for a bit, and we visited with him and 2 of his high school classmates who also happened to be banjo club first-timers. I think we’re all in agreement though at how nice the people in Pittsburgh are. We’ve seriously been treated so well here! Anyway, Fr. Joe asked us it we liked the Chicken Dance song, and of course we all said yes, so he had Lauren put in a request to the director to play the song. He happily obliged and called us up to the front of the room before they started to play. I guess I was assuming that everyone in the room knew this song and therefore would stand up and do the dance while the band played. That was wrong. In reality, it was just the 4 of us singing and dancing in the front of the room making complete fools of ourselves. But, the audience seemed to enjoy it, and we were actually having quite a bit of fun ourselves. Thank goodness that was our only performance of the night, but we continued to enjoy more familiar songs and singing solos, including one by Fr. Joe done in our honor.

We ended up staying for afterhours where one of the band members stays to play the piano accompanied by a couple banjo players. We joined in the fun there too when they brought out the gut bucket and taught us how to play along. All in all it was an amazing night, and probably my favorite in Pittsburgh thus far. We could tell Fr. Joe really enjoyed having us there, but I’m not sure if he fully understood how much we genuinely enjoyed that night. 

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Banjo Adventures: Take 2

After having an amazing time at Banjo Club, we obviously had to make sure the rest of our group got the chance to experience the same thing we did. The following week we returned, this time with 9 of us.  It was pretty much the same story as the week before... we ate pretzels, drank some fine Pennsylvanian Yuengling, sang some songs and entertained the crowd with our poor dancing abilities.  Someone thought it would be a good idea to get the "young kids" to do the Charleston. We had already done the Chicken Dance that night, so how much worse could it get. 

The concession stand lady was our instructor, but considering it was hard for all 9 of us to watch her and learn, there was some improvising going on as well. We enjoyed more well-wishes from the seniors in attendance, as well as a few more surprising comments which sometimes caught us off-guard.  Specifically from the lady who made it a point to come over to our table to ask us where Honduras was, and then proceeded to chuckle to herself as she left us with one final thought: "Well, don't get eaten down there." There were some nervous glances across the table as we wondered if there was something the Passionists weren't telling us, but we couldn't help but laugh.  If cannibalism (what we agreed she was referring to) was truly a problem in Honduras, surely one of us would have found out by now. Overall, it was another great night though, and believe it or not, our last night out together as a big group. 

It was hard to believe our month in Pittsburgh was already ending.  What seemed at the beginning of the month to be a dauntingly long orientation schedule ended before most of us were ready to leave.  "Living the Monastery Life" became comfortable and routine to us.  I loved visiting with the Passionist priests over dinner, hanging out in the gardens out back during free-time and exploring the monastery and retreat house being careful to avoid the Crypt and random, often frightening religious statues in the halls.  We had many good times in Pittsburgh, and met many awesome people. It was definitely hard to say our good-byes to the Jamaica girls, because we knew we wouldn't be seeing them for a long time.  We promised to stay in touch over the next year though, and share our experiences from Jamaica and Honduras with one another. I think Amber was the one who said they bring the 10 of us volunteers together, make us spend all our waking moments together, watch us become close friends and then tear us apart in the end. I guess it's not practical to think we could just live there as a group forever, but it sure would be fun. If the whole nursing thing doesn't work out... I'm thinking becoming a Priest and moving back into the monastery sounds like the perfect back-up plan :)