[Harp-L] Serendipity, Happenstance- what ever- good story

["samblancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

I thought I'd share with y'all a kind of fun and interesting experience I
had yesterday.

Throughout my various comings and goings in my truck yesterday, I ended up
with one of my car harps, a LO in A, in my coat pocket.  I finished my work
about 3:30, which is early, and had a couple of hours to kill until an
estimate I had at 6:00 in the same end of town.  I decided to stop at the
Squirrel Hill Café for a beer (locals call it the Squirrel Cage).  As I sat
down I emptied out my coat pockets onto the table; my wallet, keys, change,
and the harp.  After I ordered, a couple of young guys walked in. One of
them had this pretty cool cap on and since I'm always trying to find a place
that has cool hats I said "hey dude, where'd you get that hat?".  As he
started to answer me he saw the harp and said "hey, do you play harp?" to
which I said "yeah, do you?" to which he said "yeah, well, I'm still
learning".  So I told him and his friend to have a seat. This guy -his name
is Heim, his friend's name is Leavey- pulls out a couple of Blues Harps and
I told him to play something so I could hear what he knew, and he plays some
riffs with some decent bends and all, showing he knew his way around 2nd
position a little.

After talking for a little bit I found out they are both 21 and are in
college.  They both love the blues and are rather concerned that their
generation doesn't seem to know or care about blues too much.  At the same
time, neither one had much of a clue about where in the city to hear blues
or where there were jams or even what a jam was, for that matter.  So I told
them where to go and  other stuff, which Hiem typed into his cell phone
(which really killed me).  They wanted to hear me play something so I played
a little and they were really blown away which also really killed me.  They
were full of "wow's and "holy shit"s.  The one guy, Leavey, said I almost
brought tears to his eyes.(!)  Heim wants to get a couple of lessons so I
gave him my email address, which he also typed into his cell phone.

For me this kind of chance meeting is really unusual and I almost never talk
to 20 somethings any more which is a shame, I guess.  The thing that was
nice about it, apart from it being about harps, was that they were both
friendly, respectful, and intelligent.  As I said I don't seem to get a
chance to talk to guys their age hardly at all and when I do have some small
bit of interaction with people of that age they often seem apathetic, or
stupid (like in a customer service situation), or cocky or some other
mixture of unpleasantness and alienation.  But since we had this connection,
the harmonica, any attitude and posturing which might arise when a young guy
starts dealing with a much older guy (I'm 45) was absent.  And any way, like
I said, these two guys were pretty intelligent.

The other thing is that I feel really excited about being able to teach
something to somebody from a younger generation.  I hope this guy emails me.
I think it would be really satisfying to pass on some of what I know.

I have the harmonica to thank for all that.  Later.

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh