BIG PUG\u2019S PIPES<\/p>\n
Back in the early 1980s, when Juneau\u2019s waterfront was between the mining boom and the cruise ship boom, Puggy Nelson and I would ignore the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d sign, go around a chain link fence and walk out where the abandoned docks rotted on their pilings. There at the end of South Franklin Street as it turns into Thane we\u2019d sit in the sun and Pug would try to teach me \u201cGin I were a Barron\u2019s Heir\u201d on the bagpipe practice chanter. <\/p>\n
A practice chanter is easier to blow and a lot quieter than bagpipes. There are nine holes with the same spacing as an actual pipe chanter. I learned how to hold my fingers to sound those notes and how to make grace notes and doublings. Pug had a rare gift for being entirely present in the moment. <\/p>\n
He was a patient and encouraging teacher who got me halfway through my first song. It was a hoot to spend time with him but commercial fishing took me out of town for a lot of the summer. I got married and between school, jobs, small kids in the house and all that I ended up drifting away from the chanter and didn\u2019t see Pug so much. When we did meet, he was usually up to something good. Once he told me about a restaurant job he\u2019d started, \u201cOh, I just go in nights and push a few dishes through the machine.\u201d Why does a guy pushing 70 take up dishwashing? To donate the money to people who needed it; people in Central America, if I remember correctly. <\/p>\n
Always after seeing him I\u2019d think two things. \u201cWhat a great guy.\u201d and, \u201cI should practice the chanter.\u201d I\u2019d toodle away at it until other things took the forefront and my practice tapered off. As time passed, Pug and I met less and less often, sometimes going a year or more between sightings. Eventually I thought he\u2019d moved away until one day, there he was downtown. He walked right up and said, \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about you. I want to give you my pipes.\u201d We\u2019re talking beautiful African blackwood Grainger\u2019s, mind you. I thought of the maxim, \u201cInto the making of a piper go seven years\u201d and said, \u201cJeez, Pug. I don\u2019t know. That\u2019s really generous but it would be a huge commitment. Let me think about it.\u201d As fate would have it, three days later I bumped into him again at the very same spot. He said, \u201cWait right here. My pipes are around the corner.\u201d So, that\u2019s how I came to have these wonderful pipes. He even included his sheet music: marches, reels, strathspeys and pibrochs, some of them wonderfully complex and, to me, incomprehensible except to say here was a player who knew his stuff. <\/p>\n
That was 15 years ago. Since then I\u2019ve made a few cold starts with help from a couple great pipers. Each time I\u2019ve gotten closer to the break-through. When I was on a practice roll, I\u2019d be happy to run into Pug and tell him so. When I wasn\u2019t practicing I\u2019d feel sheepish when we met. Through it all the pipes have spent their days waiting patiently for me pick them up and get serious.<\/p>\n
The old docks are gone now. So is the Cold Storage where Puggy was foreman for 40 years. In May 2016, the man himself passed away. For whatever reason things happen, my brother-in-law decided to take up the bagpipes this year. He sent me a copy of Logan\u2019s Complete Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe as a subtle hint that we should just do this together. Pug\u2019s pipes aren\u2019t excited yet because they\u2019ve been down this road before but every day now they come out and of course, every time they do I think of Pug. My piping goal for the new year is to go down to where South Franklin becomes Thane and play \u201cGin I were a Barron\u2019s Heir\u201d from start to finish. <\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Dick Callahan is a Juneau writer. In April 2016, he won first place in the Alaska Press Club Awards for best outdoors or sports <\/em>column in the state. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BIG PUG\u2019S PIPES Back in the early 1980s, when Juneau\u2019s waterfront was between the mining boom and the cruise ship boom, Puggy Nelson and I would ignore the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d sign, go around a chain link fence and walk out where the abandoned docks rotted on their pilings. There at the end of South Franklin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":25360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25359"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}