A few weeks ago, when I sent out the invitations to yesterday’s house concert, I billed the musician, Larry Murante, as “one of the nicest guys we know.”  If I were to resend message today, I might delete the “one of” part, or at least put that entire phrase in boldface.  And underline it.

Larry has been doing house concerts here for a good many years –probably eight or nine.  He was recommended by another musician friend, Carolyn Cruso – or rather she recommended us to him.  He telephoned us, we coordinated schedules, and I told him (as I tell all our out-of-town musicians) that we could put him up if he didn’t want to make the trek back to Seattle following the gig.

It was that first “morning after’ at the breakfast table that he learned about our ghost, Mrs. Crouch, and we learned that his day job is cleaning houses.   He left rather hurriedly murmuring that if he booked another date with us, he’d probably stay elsewhere.  I vowed that, no matter what, I’d do more than a cursory dusting if there was a next time.

As it turned out, he brought his wife along for his next show here and then wrote a wonderful ballad about Mrs. Crouch which is on his latest album, “Point of Entry.”  He put his own special twist on the story and I’ve always thought that it was the way he made his peace with her.  For my part… I know that even my renewed cleaning efforts wouldn’t be up to the white glove test, but Larry has never complained.

He was here for two nights this time, and not only helped us set up for the concert – he runs a mean vacuum cleaner and is an expert when it comes to moving furniture and schlepping chairs back and forth to the church – but also gave us a major hand with the clean-up afterwards.  In fact, he mopped both the kitchen and dining room floors and used our rug-cleaning spray on a few potluck spills before another run at the carpet!  Way beyond the call!  And at my protests, he just laughed and said, “This is nothing.  I’m a professional, you know!”

I don’t know if any of our musician friends will be reading this blog but, just in case, I want them to know that Larry has raised the bar pretty high around here!  Be forewarned!