In Montana: the Recital At Marge's House

By Gregory Jaynes

Everyone calls Marguerite Hanusa "Marge," and everyone who is anyone in the high plains Montana town of Choteau comes to Marge's adult piano and organ recital every year about this time. She holds it in the parlor of her house, where she has a Story & Clark upright, a Steinway baby grand and a two-tiered Conn with a full footboard. The first townspeople to show up get to sit on folding chairs from the Methodist and Lutheran churches; the tardy in the audience must make do with the staircase and the floor. After the music the party moves into the kitchen for refreshments, and some heretofore taciturn Montanans refresh themselves into the mistaken belief that they have gifted tonsils, but this is putting the cart before the horse.

Marge is 82 years old. She was graduated from Earlham College in Indiana in 1926, and after a period of piano study in Dayton, she yielded to a love of all things western and moved to Choteau, becoming the high school music teacher in 1928. It is a ranching community -- wheat mostly -- set on rolling land studded with spruce, fir and aspen, by the eastern face of the Rockies. Its winters can get quite brutal, and now and again an old hand decides to break the monotony by taking a lesson from Marge. Even if you have no ear at all, Marge can get you over the hump with, say, Old MacDonald Had a Farm. She cannot, however, rid you of the jitters on recital day. Thereby hangs a tale.

"One of my men had a bad experience," Marge was saying just before her most recent annual recital. "He won't be playing tonight. He has a lovely touch -- such big hands -- but an audience just destroys him." His only time on the stage, this fellow fell apart. "He stayed here all day practicing. He had a Valium. Then he called the doctor. Then he had three more Valium and two double shots." As show time neared, this musician stepped out the kitchen door to relieve himself. Marge had to stop the proceedings and find him and lead him into the parlor. He played Home on the Range twelve times. Marge hissed from the kitchen, "Get to the end!" The man whined, "I passed it." Marge came out and put her arm around him. "I finally just led him off. They couldn't wake him up till 4 the next afternoon.

"And I had one man just sit down, look at the keys, get up and walk out." This time there would be no such embarrassments. Marsha and Charlie Hinch -- "They have the Foothills' men's store," Marge said -- dropped by early on the Saturday of recital to brush up. Charlie, a beginner, was to play The Oak Grove on the organ. Marsha upbraided him for not bringing his music. "I've played the son of a bitch 500 times," Charlie said. "I don't need the music." (People in Montana talk earthy, even Marge. One day Charlie was rehearsing, and, as she tells it, "he had his left hand working well, and his right hand, and he got his foot going, and I was just thrilled. I said, 'Charlie, I'm so proud of you.' And Charlie said, 'Bullshit!' ")

Soon enough it was time for the performance, and Marge's parlor filled to overflowing. Everyone was there, it seemed, but Choteau's best-known citizen, A.B. Guthrie Jr., author of The Big Sky, among other celebrated works. He is 85, and the last time he came, explained his daughter, Helen Guthrie Miller, "he fell asleep in the kitchen. The next morning he woke up screaming, 'Who's making all that goddam racket!' " Helen Guthrie Miller possesses a tart tongue herself, it turns out. When a woman companion at the recital boasted that because of aerobics, she has the pulse of a 25-year- old, Helen said, "Too bad you don't have a face to match." The Guthries speak their mind.

Marge came in from the kitchen and addressed the crowd. She wore jet beads and a black blouse with a naughty scoop neck and black pajama pants, and she looked young and terrific. On the upright was a bouquet from her students. "I hope you all don't melt," she said. "Do you feel like sardines? I'm giving you all the air I can." It was a hot night for the high plains, and all the doors and windows were open. "I'm so proud of them," Marge went on. "I just hope nerves don't take over. The only night they don't like is this."

The first number was Beethoven's Egmont Overture, and the quartet that played it -- Marsha Hinch, Myrna Paulis, Darlene Ferris and Mary Stokes -- played it without a hitch. There was no metronome in evidence, but you could get the count by watching their chins and brows. Next Marsha and Myrna played Greensleeves. Then Mary Rathman, a seriously accomplished pianist and mother of eight children, played a Debussy prelude and two Chopin etudes. Her hands flew. Lois Crabtree and Chris McClue played a rhapsody, Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul. Charlie Hinch had a rough start on The Oak Grove and said out loud, "I need a drink of whiskey." He got the feel of it at last, but when he came to Brahm's Lullaby, he froze. "Marge!" he begged, and she appeared from the kitchen and placed his hands. "You've got it now," she said. "You sure?" he asked, and then played it fine. Albert Tesch, the town plumber, came in on the organ next and offered a sweet Carolina Moon and If I Loved You. Then in the course of an hour and a quarter they all returned in various combinations and played other tunes. The audience was effusive with its applause.

Later there were drinks all around in the kitchen, and covered dishes (the Swedish meatballs were most favorably remarked upon). Still later, some people got false courage and made for the instruments, and some old standards like Harbor Lights and Stormy Weather took a hard beating. The party petered out about 2 in the morning. Just before closing shop Marge said same time, same place next year, provided she is up to it. A ranch-woman volunteered at that point that, no question, Marge will be up to it. "I'll tell you how young she is," the woman said of the teacher. "There was a book some of us ladies were swapping around, Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz. Certain parts of it confused a few of us. We had to go to Marge. She explained the dirty passages."