Happy New Year 2009

Home in South County:

The Grand Mother and Grumpy spent New Year's Eve snuggled in our warm home watching the celebrations in the "new" Grand Ol' Opry house in Nashville TN via NPR. Garrison Keillor was holding forth in his usual casual fashion, with numerous male and female singing and instrumental guests performing mostly folk music. Darrell entertained thoughts of "dying if he had to listen to any more of that horrible music". The Grand Mother tolerated it; Grumpy reveled in it!! [Well, admitedly, some of the female singers were only barely tolerable even by Grumpy, who generally likes old-time folk music!]

One of the instruments used was a Dobro; Grumpy had heard the name before -- there is even a folk song about "When Daddy Played the Dobro" by Johnny Cash. I thought I had identified which one it was (there may have been two). Anyway, after the show at midnight, I looked up the definition of dobro in the big unabridged dictionary. Alas, no such word! I checked the Grand Mother's crossword puzzle books -- same result. Finally, I went on the INTERNET to Wikipedia and found a thorough description:

The Dobro is a modified guitar using an inverted concave metalic cone as a resonator on which the bridge is mounted. It is played by picking or strumming the strings which are modified tonewise by a round steel bar that may be plied up and down along the lenth of the neck to produce very harmonic and also wailing sounds.

The name originated in 1928 when the Dopyera brothers formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company. "Dobro" is both a contraction of "Dopyera brothers" and a word meaning "good" in their native Slovak language. An early company motto was "Dobro means good in any language." It was introduced in 1928 by John Dopyera; he and his brother were partners in the company that manufactured it, hence the name, Dobro.

In the end (at midnight) the Grand Mother and Grumpy held each other tightly and after a long kiss, sang Auld Lang Syne -- in two-part harmony, along with the television cast and audience; how touching! With a cheery face like this, can anyone blame Grumpy for still loving her!? And, thank God, she is still mine!!