After a few years it was sold to the American
ambassador, Joseph. He played the Banjo every day and once he broke it. He managed
to break one of its strings and he was not depressed at all because the
insurance wasn’t over yet.
The owner of the shop gave it to his son, Michael, who
was about to move to England. Michael found a stainless steel string in England
and applied it to the banjo. When Michael had grown to the age of 50, he took the old,
dusty banjo to the attic, went back to Greece in 1942 during World War 2
and never came back.
Later on, in 1980, Oxford was about to build a dam on
King Street. When workers roughly opened the door of an abandoned house to observe
and demolish it, one of the workers found a banjo inside which was completely covered in spider's webs. He gave it to the Pitt Rivers Museum. Then the dam was canceled due to the
lack of resources and fear of environmental impact because many animals lived
there.
Our old banjo was placed near older and newer musical
instruments in a glass case and was carefully polished. It was not lonely because every day,
people came and enjoyed the shiny look of the banjo. Every second night it was
cleaned, making its red wood sparkle as pure ruby crystal in the moon light.
One day, when the ambient light reached the banjo in
the early, peaceful morning, someone from the official museum staff took it
with care and began to tune strings by plucking them carefully with a trustworthy
hand. There was an advertisement in the window saying that there would be an
instrument show on 4th of September. For us, advertisements are common and
annoying, but for the banjo it was the best day of its life and that paper filled with
randomly chosen neon colors was the best poster ever made.
by Alexey Ansimov
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