Mister Rodwig

For most of the 1950s, we lived at 1328 Ebony Lane in Houston (the house with the A in front) and had lots of next-door neighbors.  The house on the corner was 1328 Du Barry, which caused all sorts of problems with mail delivery, but the side of our lot abutted the backs three or four other homes that faced Du Barry Lane.

None of the homes looked anything at all like they do today – there were no pools back then, and the original houses have all been rebuilt, expanded or replaced – but I included the picture so you could get an idea of the layout.

The folks who lived in the first house from the corner were the Rodwigs, a middle-aged couple from the Midwest who were much older than the rest of our neighbors.

Velma Rodwig was a sweet lady who reminded me of my grandmother.  She kept an immaculate yard that was full of flowers, and she always had home-baked treats on hand for the neighborhood kids.

I’m sure Mr. Rodwig  had a first name, but I never heard it.  Even Velma referred to him as Mister. He  was a construction foreman who supervised crews hanging high iron on the many skyscrapers popping up in downtown Houston.  He was big and muscular, and he looked like a slightly older, perpetually sunburned, Mr. Clean.  He had lost the tip of his chin to a falling I-beam in a construction accident, and at some other time, a mishap had claimed the last two joints of his ring finger and the end of the pinkie finger on his right hand.  He spoke in a gruff voice with a clipped Midwestern accent that carried just a hint of his Dutch heritage.

I wasn’t exactly afraid of Mr. Rodwig, but I’ll admit that he did make me a little nervous. I considered him a formidable man, and  I was always on my best behavior when he was around. 

Then I saw a side of him I could never have imagined.

I planned to join the band when I went to school in September, so the summer before I started Hamilton Junior High, my dad went to a pawn shop and bought me a beautiful silver saxophone.

  They were both busy, hard working men who didn’t talk often, but somehow my dad was aware that Mr. Rodwig knew something about saxophones, and he asked him to come by and check it out.  A few days later, one evening after supper, the Rodwigs came over. 

Mr Rodwig pulled the sax out of its case and after a a couple of false starts and a few mumbled  comments that contained words like “rusty” and “years” he put the thing to his mouth and played an unbelievably evocative version of Willow, Weep for Me.

He continued to play for the next two hours, treating us to dozens of songs - all from memory.  Somehow, the missing fingers didn’t matter at all, and Paul Desmond himself never coaxed a sweeter sound from a sax.

That was the first, last and only time I ever heard him play, but it was a night I will never forget.