Colin Staub at a Push-Play Piano in Downtown Portland
The President of the Board of the Oysterville Restoration Foundation at the present time is Colin Staub. He has been a part-time Oysterville resident for all of his 34 years. He has worked in the oysters during the summers, spends as much time as possible at his family’s second home here in Oysterville, even bicycling now and again from his home in Portland, and has performed at Vespers on numerous occasions — he is a mandolin player of some note.
“The Old Rugged Cross”
For a few years now, when he’s in Oysterville, Colin has been playing the piano in the church — sometimes ragtime, but more recently, some of the hymns from the old Methodist hymnals we used to use for Vespers. (Though he began on the violin as a young boy and now is teaching himself the piano, he still considers the mandolin his primary instrument.) Yesterday, he wrote me this note: There are a dozen or so pianos set up in public places around Portland right now, and I’ve been making the rounds to play them all. I was playing “How Great Thou Art” and “The Old Rugged Cross,” the versions I learned in the Oysterville Church hymnal, downtown the other day, and a guy came up and started singing along. He was visiting from Atlanta and said he didn’t anticipate hearing gospel music in downtown Portland. The hymnals are coming in handy!
Piano at the Oysterville Church
There was one in particular that sticks in my mind, where I sat down to play a few boogie-woogie songs and noticed a woman sitting nearby who was crying and clearly not having a good day. By the end of the first song I noticed she was tapping her feet, although still crying. A couple songs later she came over to the piano and asked if I could teach her a couple chords, and we ended up having an impromptu piano lesson and talked about what she was going through. She said it was the best unexpected thing to happen to her all day, and I thought it really illustrated the power of public music.
The 43rd year of Vesper services begins a week from Sunday — “God willin’ an the creek don’t rise” as our friend George Talbott used to say. The Oysterville Restoration Foundation waited until Governor Inslee made his July 1st “proclamation” regarding Covid protocols for the rest of the summer — assuming, of course, that things continue to get better, not worse.
So, as of July 1st, Carol Wachsmuth and I got to work! (You might remember that both of us have long since “retired from our volunteer scheduling jobs, but it seemed important to get started” and no one else had stepped up.) We divided the responsibilities — Carol would book the ministers and the ORF members who would present the Oysterville Moments; I would schedule the musicians and the organists. Vespers would start August 1st and continue every Sunday afternoon through September 26th. A bit shorter season — only nine Sundays as opposed to twelve — and a much shorter time span in which to do the scheduling — three weeks as opposed to our usual six months!!
Seeing the “Church Open” sign from my dining room window once more makes me feel that all’s right with the world again — at least with this little corner of it. In the vestibule, though, on each of the inner doors — one leading to the sanctuary and the other to the room we’ve always called “The Sunday School Room” — are signs asking visitors who enter to please wear masks. Perhaps instructions/suggestions will change once we get Governor Inslee’s promised July 1st Directives.
As for scheduled events — the first to take place since sheltering began in March 2020 was a wedding last Saturday. And what a wedding it was! All the men arrived in kilts and the women in ankle-length pleated skirts or other authentic-looking regalia and, from what I could see, all in the same tartan. Perhaps, because of Covid uncertainties, they had confined the guest list to family members only which would explain the matching tartans. Even the pipers’ kilts matched. I wish I had taken a picture, but now that I am no longer the church scheduler and have no interaction with brides beforehand, I felt it might be a bit intrusive.
The other regular church usage in the summer, of course, is our twelve weeks of Sunday Music Vespers services. Traditionally, they have begun on Fathers’ Day and continued through Labor Day Sunday. At the present time, the Oysterville Restoration Foundation does not have a Vespers Co-ordinator, so Carol Wachsmuth and I have agreed to do the programming for August and September with the caveat that the scheduling will remain flexible — just “in case. ” All things being equal, there will be nine Music Vespers services — five in August and four in September. Keep your fingers crossed!
