“I’m going to finish my book of columns this year.”
— I said that. Which means I really have to do it now.
Reviewing columns you’ve written for almost half a century will jog memories. Floods of them. A few that stand out more than others.
For me, those are pieces about people I’ve met along the journey. Ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Like one I penned about a Naples resident back when I was a much younger journalist working at The Monitor.
In fact, that stint in Morris County was my first newspaper job. The date at the top of the page that week was May 13, 1976. Reading it last week for the first time in decades was a flashback.
Somewhere among the collections of good advice and old sayings, that one begins, there is one admonition that Andrew J. Young of Naples has apparently followed throughout his life.
“Keep a song in your heart.”
When I visited him recently, he showed me songbooks stacked beside his bed marked with page numbers on the front. Selected pages revealed their significance. The ones with credits that read “Copyright 1953 by Stamps Quartet Music Co., Inc. Words and Music by Andrew J. Young.”
A yellowed piece of letterhead stationery tucked in a scrapbook page announced “Andrew J. Young — teacher, scoring for orchestra, arranging, songs, anthems, and choral pieces, composer and editor.”
Born in Marietta, Texas, 82 years ago, Young said he was a farm boy until he was nearly 23. “I was raised on the farm,” he said. “But when I left it—I left it. I have no desire to plant flowers, put out peach trees, or anything like that.”
Young said music has been his life’s work. “Been playin’ the piano since I was five years old. My mother sat me down in her lap and started me out just like she did my sister. Made me play five days a week, all the time I was at home.”
Then leaning closer, Young added with a gleam in his eye, “I hated it. Thought it was something for girls only, you know, kind of sissy.”
“In 1917, I went off to the war. Wasn’t quite 23 years old,” Young remembered. “They gathered up several thousand of us and sent us to England. We were sent to perform all kinds of trades. I had signed up for the air corps, so they put me in a group that trained under the British Air Force, which the United States didn’t recognize at the time … they trained us in the basics of flyin’ an airplane.
“They flew ‘Jenny’s’ back in those days,” he recalled thoughtfully. “Didn’t even have parachutes. Came home after Armistice Day and haven’t been in one since.”
Young’s thoughts drifted. He gazed, pointing toward the sky with his cane. “Looked out the other day and saw one of those jets goin’ across the sky. Watched it until it went clear out of sight.” Bringing his thoughts closer to earth, he continued, “I’m gonna fly in one of them someday, just to see what it’s like.”
While his love has been music, his labor has been a brick and plaster mason. Young said he’s done quite a bit of work in the area, including the David Granbury Memorial Hospital at Naples and the school building and rock fence at the James Bowie School at Simms.
“I’m going to try to talk them into lettin’ me lay just a few of the brick on the new hospital addition,” he grinned. “If they’ll let me.”
‘Mr. Andrew,’ as he is known by almost everyone, is probably best remembered for conducting the old singing schools that used to be a way of life in northeast Texas. Three-week affairs. Eighteen days, eight hours a day of the science of music.
“I started teaching singing schools before the war,” Young said. “Taught them all through the years. Taught 57 in Cass County alone. More than anyone living or dead.”
“You know, there’s joy in takin’ someone who can’t even sing … never even thought about carryin’ a tune and teachin’ them about music,” he said.
“Day before yesterday, I was in Wyninegar’s (drug store in Naples),” Young laughed. “This fellow came up to me and said, ‘I think l know who I’m talkin’ to. You taught me in a singing school at Rocky Branch in 1915.’ And I told him he was right, except it was l916. l remembered it because I taught the one at Rocky Branch right before I went into the war.”
“Spent some time in California doing some plaster work,” the musician turned brick mason continued. “Came back to Naples and heard that there was a lot of work goin’ on in Texarkana. So I moved over there and wound up stayin’ several years.
“The seventh day of August last year, I was brought to Naples and put in the hospital with pneumonia,” he said. “Didn’t know anyone or anything for 27 days. I was brought from the hospital to here at Redbud (nursing home) and have been here ever since.
“With the help of the folks here … and above,” Young added, pointing his cane upward, “I have gained my strength back, and can play the piano again … and walk to town every day.”
Still active in piano playing, ‘Mr. Andrew’ plays for many activities at Redbud. He maintains the pianos and keeps them in tune. In addition, he advertises actively for piano repairs and tuning work.
If we were all were charged with one sentence to describe our life, Andrew J. Young could have done no better when he said, “Singing and playin’ the piano … it’s been my life.”
—Leon Aldridge
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(Photo at top of the page: Andrew Young at the piano at Redbud Nursing Home in Naples, Texas taken by Leon Aldridge in May of 1976.)
Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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