806 - Sparky's Magic Piano
Spirituality Column #806
April 26,
2022
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Sparky’s
Magic Piano
By Bob
Walters
One of my
earliest memories – a vivid, before-kindergarten recollection – is of a record album
my dad bought for us kids titled “Sparky’s Magic Piano.”
We’re
talking circa 1958, when a “record” was one of those flat vinyl discs you put
on a “record player.” Dad – John Walters,
1926-1991 – was a classical music buff and I vividly remember as a little kid
when he and mom brought home our new “Hi-Fi” – a “Pilot” brand, tube-based,
monaural (not stereo) furniture-grade, dark, square-ish, top-opening floor unit. It had a matching second speaker Dad placed on
the other side of our small living room at 321 Lincoln Blvd., in the Lakeview
suburb of Battle Creek, Mich.
Dad had
shopped around and was convinced this Pilot was the richest, best sounding home
Hi-Fi unit available. It wasn’t the stereo-TV-radio
combo many baby-boomers grew up with. It was just a record player, but a truly
magnificent sounding one.
Along with
the predictable Bach-Beethoven-Brahms-Mozart-Tchaikovsky recordings that started
his soon-to-be-substantial collection, Dad brought home for us kids – just my older
sister Linda and I at the time; Joe was a baby and Debbie came along a bit
later – a story-and-music boxed album set of “Sparky’s Magic Piano.”
One way you
knew, from a practical standpoint, that it was for the kids – the title
notwithstanding – was that the three-record set was numbered with Sides 1 and 6
on the first record, then 2 and 5, then 3 and 4. You could stack them on the changer, listen
to Sides 1 through 3, then flip the whole stack and listen to Sides 4 through
6.
On Dad’s
multi-platter concert albums, Sides 1 and 2 were on the same disc so you couldn’t
stack them on the changer and possibly scratch them when they dropped.
That record
player remained part of my life up into my adulthood, but let’s talk about
Sparky. He was a mythical boy with
desire but little talent who wanted very much to play great piano. Alas, Sparky made a deal with the devil, trading
his own soul for the talent to be a world-famous concert pianist prodigy. On Side 6, the devil wants his talent back
and leaves Sparky on stage devastated and humiliated, unable to play.
Moral to the
story: You have to work for and earn
lasting success and joy.
Satan’s
funny that way. The human condition is
rife with desires to be really good at something for the sake of fame and
money, rather than the purer and Godly route of putting in the work and love
required to bring true joy to one’s endeavors.
Satan always
wants his gifts back, because they are worldly, fleeting, and based in pride,
greed, and power. He has no power to
create life; death is his only payout.
Beethoven
was great at music because he loved it.
Larry Bird loved basketball.
Billy Graham loved Jesus and loved leading people to Christ. The happiest people I know – probably who any
of us know – are the ones whose families, lives, vocations, professions, and
hobbies have been shaped by something larger than pedantic earthly measurements
of time, sweat, and desire. Like, say, love, service, faith, and God’s gifts.
In this
post-Easter period of joy and reflection, one lesson from the Cross of Jesus is
that nothing truly worthwhile comes cheaply or easily. Another is that love and sacrifice, not fame or
money, are the life sparks that burn hottest, brightest, and longest.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com),
whose dad sang tenor in Michigan State’s a cappella men’s choir in the 1940s,
figures surely others know of Sparky’s Magic Piano.