Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 5, 1995 TAG: 9510050010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When Russ Bennett gets up for work every morning at 4:30, he can't practice his accordion inside the house because the noise wakes his wife and three kids. He can't practice outside the house because it wakes the entire neighborhood.
He could practice after work, he concedes, but then he wouldn't see much of his kids before bedtime.
So...Russ Bennett plays for all the world.
During his lunch hour. At Smith Park on Wiley Drive.
Every day, weather permitting.
He is, to quote Orson Welles, "as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral.''
Bennett has raised the eyebrow of many a lunch-time jogger and stay-at-home mom.
There you are running in your Nikes or watching your kid flip on the monkey bars.
And there is that sound.
You hear Russ squeeze a few bars of Stephen Foster's "Oh, Susanna.''
You see him standing there in his coat and tie, facing the Norfolk-Southern train tracks, encircled by a ring of five stoic trees.
You feel you're at a Jewish wedding reception dancing a round of "Hava Nagila'' with Uncle Sidney stepping on your toes.
You wonder if you've just jogged into a postmodern TV spoof, a combination of "The Twilight Zone'' and "The Lawrence Welk Show.''
Russ is used to the stares. Every day he carts his 25-pound accordion into his office at Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern, where he works as a mechanical engineer.
Every day his co-workers stare.
"It's temperature-sensitive, so I can't leave it in the car all day,'' says Bennett, 44. "They see me carrying it in and out, and they think I'm traveling somewhere with this old suitcase.''
Trust me when I say this. Russ Bennett is actually quite shy.
"Sometimes, I have to admit, I wonder how far the sound carries.'' He scratches his beard, smiling apologetically. "My intent is not to intrude on people, on their park time.''
He's not going out of his way to be odd, he says. He just loves accordion music.
Always has. He remembers Sunday nights growing up, watching Lawrence Welk on TV with his mom and dad. He remembers seeing an accordionist perform several years ago at the Texas State Fair.
Then, almost three years ago, he bought his first squeeze box, a used Wurlitzer, at a Roanoke Fiddle & Banjo Club instrument sale. Soon after, he heard about Charles Rowe, owner of Roanoke's Melody Haven music store.
Rowe wouldn't give his age (``you can call me `sir' ''), but admitted giving lessons as far back as the '40s and '50s, when accordion lessons were as popular a pre-teen rite of passage - some say, punishment - as piano lessons.
At one time, Rowe taught hundreds of Roanoke boys and girls everything from "Lady of Spain'' to "Song of the Volga Boatmen.'' Now, the accordion has gone the way of the pogo stick.
Russ is currently Rowe's only student, though that doesn't stop the taskmaster from ordering, "It's time to do some woodshedding.'' That's Rowe's way of ordering Russ to practice, practice, practice.
"I can't verify how much he practices, but he's done pretty well,'' Rowe said. "I'm a nut on theory, so he knows what he's doing.''
Told that Russ practices religiously, in public, Rowe said, "That's good, I guess. A lot of people wouldn't do that.''
When it's cold or rainy, Russ practices in the youth room of Christ Episcopal Church. But he prefers the outdoors.
He doesn't mind wearing sunglasses - to keep the summer gnats out of his face - or the occasional stowaway caterpillar that rides back to the office in his hair.
He likes his little corner of Smith Park. He's even gotten used to the noise the train cars make sitting there at a halt - all that mysterious clanging, groaning and rattling around.
As he stood there playing on a recent weekday, the trains made a peculiar, rhythmic back-up for his Navajo folk song. When he finished, the Norfolk-Southern work whistle made its 12:30 call, as if on cue.
"That tells me I need to get back to work in 15 minutes,'' he says.
A bicyclist whizzes by, then a few joggers. They stare for a minute, curiously, then keep going.
Russ Bennett plays one last song, "The Man on the Flying Trapeze.''
Then he packs his accordion into its ancient case and heads back to work, his concert in the park over, for today.
Beth Macy's columns runs in Tuesday and Thursday Extra. Her number is 981-3435.
by CNB