 Brian Bunkowsky
Tenor Banjo
To Be, or Not to Be?
As with so many aspects of our daily lives, this story has a rather improbable beginning. Looking back on it now, the notable events are as follows.
About 1951 or 1952, at the age of 5-7 years, I had a serious case of “Red Measles”, accompanied by high fever. Damage to my inner ears, not immediately evident, brought about a gradual and serious loss of hearing as I grew older. A minor problem during my school years, the hearing problem has continually worsened over the years, and now exerts major affects upon the social aspects of life. Has this been a totally negative process? I'm not sure.
One of the items that I played with as a child, age 8 to 10, was a beat-up economy version guitar that happened to be in the house. No family member was able to play it, but that guitar intrigued me a lot. I have strong memories of singing for hours, strumming the strings with my thumb, and getting a huge water blister in reward. To a young boy that spent a lot of time playing alone, that guitar was a ticket to heaven. Since I was convinced already of my musical talent, I spent weeks and months relentlessly pleading with my loving mother to get me my own, shiny new guitar. Mother’s thoughts were not similar to my own, as she said that I would only have a short time of interest, and then forget about it. There were very few things in life that my dear mother misdiagnosed. Just goes to show that nobody’s perfect.
Seven or eight years later, with a driver’s license and about 80 bucks in my wallet, I spent some time shopping in Winnipeg music stores and pawn shops, and found it. My own shiny guitar!
A couple years later, good friends suggested our musical group could improve with a banjo. More research in the Winnipeg pawn shops culminated in 1965 with my purchase of a brand new Vega tenor banjo.
Forty one years later, the musical experience and all the people associated with it are the personal reward. Difficulties that we meet in our daily lives may result in a more satisfying end for some of us, and in the case of my own hearing problems, I feel this is so. Being asked to be a part of Legacy was, at the start, a little difficult since I had relatively little involvement with music the previous years. I’m happy to say it’s all been good.
Playing with the young members of the group is almost like living life over again. Few people are so fortunate. It was a ticket to heaven at the beginning, and it’s almost heaven again.
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