Main Street Melody: The magic is in the music and the music is on Main

By Stephen W. Hoag Ph.D.

Main Street Melody is an uninhibited, melodramatic novel of love and romance that speaks to the intrinsic sway of … music. MELODY reveals the power of music. Often, just the first few bars of a tune can revive a memory of many decades ago or almost magically flip an internal switch, changing despair into joy and loneliness into a swath of warmth. No other domain in our society has that capacity and that personal impact. Music, in its many forms, meets the “needs” of every person in every demographic category.

The teenage and adult characters in this textured novel of the age of innocence will touch your heart in endless ways from the tenderness of a first kiss, to the nefarious pranks of unfettered youth. In each moment of wonderment there will be music as you have never experienced it before. From the echoes of car radios, to the magnificent sound of a concert band, the creative excitement of a garage band to that singular voice, that when heard just once can never be forgotten.

The purported calculable components of life are often capricious, as one can never count on the preciseness of happenstance. Such are the purported necessities of life, food, water, shelter, and clothing. Indeed, each is indispensable but at the mercy of economic and environmental conditions. With all of that to contemplate in the textured world all about us, one element brings forth the dreams and memories of special moments, hope, and love, … MUSIC.

The dramatic conclusion surely will convince you that MUSIC, like love, never fails, and no matter the occasion or the circumstance of life, music makes the darkest moments more tolerable and enhances the zenithal peaks of a lifetime.

“Main Street” Melody will capture the fullness of your senses … and bring music to new heights in your heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823014380

Stephen W. Hoag Ph.D.

An innovative author, passionate educator, football coach, and mentor, Dr. Hoag was a Connecticut State Department of Education member for over 35 years. An accomplished speaker, he has entertained and thrilled audiences throughout his lifetime with his anecdotes and philosophy on teaching, parenthood, athletic coaching, and student leadership. Dr. Hoag has received state and national recognition for teaching, coaching, education assessment, and community service. Of the many awards, Dr. Hoag was the recipient of the national 2008 C. Thomas Olivio Award, presented to one person annually for leadership and creativity in student assessment by the National Occupational Competency Testing Institute. In 2013 Dr. Hoag was honored with the Silver Eagle Award of the Connecticut Council of Deliberation for “sterling service to uplift humanity”; and the 2016 Outstanding Community Service Award by the Urban League of Greater Hartford. Dr. Hoag created and directed the groundbreaking Developing Tomorrow’s Professionals (DTP) program for Black and Hispanic young men. Stephen Hoag is the author of “A Son’s Handbook, Bringing Up Mom with Alzheimer’s/Dementia,” a stirring personal account of his ten years caring for his mother with this dreaded disease. Dr. Hoag’s romantic novel, “Whisper of a Kiss,” was released in 2018 with the inspirational moving book “Vows” in 2020, winning acclaim for its emotional acumen and encouraging approach to understanding one person’s impact on another. His 2021 book, “Before the Picture Fades,” is a historical account of the hundred-plus-year life of Wallingford, Connecticut’s Lyman Hall High School, detailing the most dramatic athletic moment in Connecticut schoolboy history. In 2022, the first of the “Main Street” trilogy was released, gaining national literary plaudits. The third book of the triology, “Main Street Moment,” is scheduled for release in 2024.

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© 2023 Stephen W. Hoag, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/06/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1436-6 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1437-3 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1438-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023917124

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover Image Credit: Tony Falcone

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 After the Gala

Chapter 2 Denise Defines Music

Chapter 3 Robert Allows His Piano Flag to Fly High

Chapter 4 Finding the Music

Chapter 5 The Arrival of Mr. Richards

Chapter 6 Anyone Can Play; Everyone Plays

Chapter 7 Lefky Strikes a Chord

Chapter 8 The Lefky Compromise

Chapter 9 Music of the Concert Band

Chapter 10 Band Uniforms and Band Managers

Chapter 11 The Band Chamber

Chapter 12 The Richards Philosophy

Chapter 13 Keeping It Clean—the Spit Valves

Chapter 14 Band Buffoonery

Chapter 15 The Dirty Sax

Chapter 16 Terry Time

Chapter 17 An Accusation Too Far

Chapter 18 It’s Fizzies Time

Chapter 19 McCain, the Merciful

Chapter 20 The Great Gate

Chapter 21 The Earl of One Note

Chapter 22 Winter Concert … a Missing One Note

Chapter 23 Holding Hands

Chapter 24 The Opera House

Chapter 25 The White Piano

Chapter 26 The Key to Your Heart

Chapter 27 Entering the Open Door

Chapter 28 The Talented Two of Wallingford

Chapter 29 Walking My Julia Back Home

Chapter 30 Enter the Burgher

Chapter 31 Maureen Collins, a Town Treasure

Chapter 32 The Burgher Brings the Song

Chapter 33 Wassail

Chapter 34 Let Us Sing

Chapter 35 Here’s to Maureen

Chapter 36 The Talented Two Make Music

Chapter 37 Julia Unzips Her Heart

Chapter 38 Encore, Encore, Encore

Chapter 39 Two Songs for Maureen

Chapter 40 Gowns for Glory

Chapter 41 The Wallingford Music Festival

Chapter 42 The Music Festival: The Love of Valentine’s Day

Chapter 43 Maureen Takes Their Breath Away

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Prologue

As with every town in America, the one absolute certainty is that little is ever certain. The gradual and periodic change of seasons in the New England town of Wallingford, Connecticut, specifically on its Main Street, is demonstrable with the mercurial weather fluctuations and the vicissitudes in consequence. There is no date or time of day when one can count on a specific meteorological outcome, no matter what the supposed experts predict. The one exception relative to climatic forecasts for Wallingford is the weather prognostications of the legendary local farmer, one Alfred Markley, who accurately predicted two hurricanes, a flood, and many rainstorms and snow squalls to his fellow agronomists during his lifetime.

The purported calculable components of life are often capricious, as one can never count on the preciseness of happenstance. Such are the purported necessities of life, food, water, shelter, and clothing. Indeed, each is indispensable but at the mercy of economic and environmental conditions. With all that to contemplate in the textured world all about us, one element brings forth the dreams and memories of special moments, hope, and love.

That is the intrinsic sway of music. Often, just the first few bars of a tune can revive a memory of many decades ago or almost magically flip an internal switch, changing despair into joy and loneliness into a swath of warmth. No other domain in our society has that power and that personal impact. Music, in its many forms, meets the needs of every person in every demographic category. Music, like love, never fails, and no matter the occasion or the circumstance of life, music makes the darkest moments more tolerable and enhances the zenithal peaks of a lifetime.

To everyone who has enjoyed the romance and wonderment of Denise, Kyle, Julia, Lefky, Robert, and the rest of the Main Street friends, they are all back in Melody.

Chapter 1

After the Gala

The days and weeks that followed the First Lighting of the Lantern Gala in early November were marked with an epoch of inner joy and excitement for Julia Dehrigg. A few months earlier, Julia, born mute, prayed daily that someday her silent voice would miraculously generate speech, or a medical procedure would be developed to allow her occasional grunts to be transformed into words. Then one word came forth from her lips in a twinkling with a blossoming love for a boy she hardly knew, Robert Ragsdale, marked by a single kiss under the historic lantern.

Following the catalytic first kiss with Robert at the First Lighting of the Lantern Gala, when Julia willed the utterance of the name Bobbeeee, a fresh buoyancy emerged in the beautiful Julia.

As with Peter Pan in the ancient children’s story of the same name announcing in a song that I can fly, Julia discovered, I can talk. As any concerns that the sounds emanating from her mouth might be ridiculed or scoffed at by others waned, Julia worked incessantly to talk, and talk she did. She would watch the morning and evening news shows with the sound off so she could mimic the movements of the news anchors’ mouths, often simultaneously saying their words with them. Julia would stand in front of her mirror in her bedroom and speak short sentences, watching how she formed every word, trying to enunciate each word like her mother and grandmother always did. For Julia, just months since her first word, she now was determined to speak perfectly with stinging sharpness to every d, t, and g.

With her newly born ability to speak, Julia found in herself every reason to smile. With each conversation with family, fellow students, teachers, and people she passed on Main Street while walking her dog, GaaGoo, there were reasons to smile. Rather spontaneously due to years of muscle memory, Julia would still sign during conversations, evoking quizzical looks from those she spoke with. Her hands still had a connection to her thoughts and emotions, but gradually her newly discovered voice supplanted her need to sign.

With the notoriety that came with being named Gala Queen at the annual First Lighting of the Lantern Gala, many fellow students and adults initiated conversations with Julia. As predicted by her doctors, once the utterances of speech began, Julia’s voice flowed like a mountain stream with words, seeking constant conversation and verbal responses.

It was as if a light had been switched on in a darkened room, and if ever Julia had happiness before, her beautiful face beamed, reflecting a love that was yet to be fully understood.

For Julia, it was as if she had been given a new sense far beyond that of sight, hearing, and touch. It was a sensation without a frame of reference, and no single word could define it.

A door in Julia’s heart was unlocked in the wonder of openness for the love Robert gave to Julia. There was no time spent together for Julia and Robert that was sufficient to feed the fervent want of each other’s presence. Julia waited for Robert’s phone calls each night, and although the topics of conversation were arbitrary and extemporaneous, all that was important for Julia was the sound of his voice. There was something about the qualities of his voice that brought forth deep feelings within her, powerful and previously of unimagined joy. Hearing Robert’s voice made her feel as though he was touching her.

Robert’s presence in Julia’s life was so overwhelming and oh-so unsettling that Julia needed to understand it all. She needed to talk about it in words from her heart to her voice, an all-new option since speech had only recently been given to her. To meet this need to share her young heart’s constant flutter and flame, she turned to her go-to person, her devoted grandmother, Denise.

Chapter 2

Denise Defines Music

Julia phoned her grandmother, Denise, and requested she comes by Julia’s family home on Main Street to talk. The perceptive Denise wasted little time, figuring that this talk was probably personal, driving over after dinner on a rainy Wednesday evening.

Julia was anxious to speak with Denise and sat on the top stair of the winding staircase that led to the foyer, where her grandmother would ring the chimes of the front doorbell upon arrival. Sitting at the top of the staircase with GaaGoo, Julia spoke to the sable sheltie in a series of rhetorical sentences. GaaGoo, do you think Robert loves me? Isn’t Robert the most handsome boy in the world? Am I a little pretty, GaaGoo, or am I just stupid? You can tell me the truth. I won’t get mad.

It was all within the context of thoughts and questions of a teenage girl who was not able to come to grips with the prodigious feeling of ebullient love.

As Denise approached the front door, she paused for a moment, shook her head, and grinned, perceiving that her sixteen-year-old granddaughter was experiencing the often uneven surface of unbridled fascination for a boy.

Pressing the inlaid jade button at the front door, the chimes played the Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor by Ludwig van Beethoven, the piece that Emma, Julia’s mother, played at her piano recital when she was Julia’s current age of sixteen. Each time Denise pressed that green button to the left of the huge double door, her thoughts returned to her daughter’s sensational performance of the piece known as Fur Elise.

Every so often, her son-in-law, Scott, would surprise family and friends by changing the tune of the doorbell, which usually led to the button-pusher pressing the front doorbell chimes repeatedly. On this occasion, Julia, having heard the Fur Elise, flew down the staircase to welcome her beloved grandmother.

Once inside the massive front door, Julia wrapped her arms around her grandmother’s five-foot-six inch frame with the most telling I need you hug. Together, they walked down the long hallway to the sitting room across from the piano room, where Julia cuddled close to Denise on the cranberry-red leather Chesterfield couch.

Sitting down on the seldom sat on couch, Julia held her grandmother’s hands tightly as she bypassed the traditional pleasantries and flew directly to saying, Grandmother, do you know how brown Robert’s eyes are?

Denise, pursing her lips together tightly so as not to let out one of her patently wonderful belly laughs, replied sardonically, Yes, I seem to recall that Robert has brown eyes.

The surfeit of effervescence of Julia’s giddiness for Robert made her words an avalanche of questions without necessitating answers and statements requiring no equivocation.

Julia continued to empty the thoughts of her locker of love about Robert, warmly itemizing a slew of his physical and personality traits. Taking a deep breath, she finally arrived at a perplexing conundrum she had to ask the most assiduous Denise.

Grandmother, I know I will sound silly, but I have to ask. Do you ever hear music when you look at grandfather, even when there is no music playing anywhere?

Sweet Jesus, loudly chortled Denise. Little girl, you are surely in love.

But Grandmother, Julia continued, "I hear music all around me when Robert is