Music was always a part of my relationship with my younger brother, Walter Dean, whose teenage nickname, Louie, stuck with him for life.

My earliest memory was of the two of us sitting on the floor in our apartment on Capitol Avenue making up some song in gibberish baby talk to the tune of “Clementine.” I was going on 4, he was going on 2.

We had raided the bathroom and found a 3-foot orange hose. We each held an end of the hose, and pointed the tips at each other in time to the song.

We had 2 or 3 verses made up before my mother came along.

With some annoyance, she snatched the tube away from us. Seems it was part of an enema bag which hung in the bathroom. I guess that was a common remedy in the folk medicine of that time.

Years later, when we moved to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Columbia</st1:place></st1:city>, we boys had the cold downstairs bedroom. “The Blue Bedroom” we called it. My mother had decorated it with dark blue wallpaper and curtains, because it was for two boys.

We were out of earshot of the upstairs bedrooms, where the rest of the family slept. So being unsupervised at night, we often lay there in the dark for an hour or more after bedtime, singing songs and playing guessing games we’d made up.

We enjoyed singing together, mostly the songs we’d learned in school, and we developed some really pretty harmonies. Mrs. Allen, the cheery little lady who taught music and singing to all the grades in the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Columbia</st1:place></st1:city> school, would have been proud of us. But it was Wally who always had the ear for harmony.

There was something else we tried to do many times on weekend nights. We wanted to stay up all night, for 24 hours. We called this attempted feat “Breaking the Record.”

Try though we might, by 1 or 2 AM, our efforts to maintain a continuous conversation flagged, as one or the other of us nodded off (while still sitting up) and had to be awakened. Finally, both of us would conk out at the same time, and the next thing we knew, daylight was streaming into the room. We never succeeded in “Breaking the Record.”

In 1958 when I was 11 and Wally was 9, we moved to one of the upstairs bedrooms. And when the lights went out, the singing began. But now we were serenading Ma and the girls, who were often trying to get to sleep in the next room.

Ma would tolerate us for maybe 20-30 minutes before she’d call out for us to shut it down and go to sleep.  She did say many times, though, that she loved listening to us at night.

Fast forward to 1964, when Wally was 15, and was now known as “King Louie.” That spring, Ma bought him a cheap acoustic guitar with her S&H Green Stamps. 

He took to the guitar like a duck to water, and by summer, he could practically make that guitar talk. Give him any tune, and he could play it by ear. We got into folk singing, especially the songs of Peter, Paul, and Mary.

A bit later, he acquired an electric guitar, and briefly played with a garage rock band.

Over our adult years, we had many get-togethers, and the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">high point</st1:place></st1:city> was always our songfests. Louie introduced us to the music of many and varied folk singers. Louie and Carol often attended outdoor folk concerts, always learning new songs.

Louie was also an inspiration to my son, Jeff, who became a fairly good guitar player in his own right, and part of a garage band. Jeff joined Louie and me on many hikes, including many climbs of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Mt.</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Monadnock</st1:placename></st1:place>.

Jeff was fond of his Uncle Louie, and was preparing to make the all-day, 530-mile drive from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> and lose 3 days from work to be with us today. I had all I could do to talk him out of it. His family needs him up there.

Music was only one of many bonds I had with my brother, but it’s one that makes for some good stories. I could as easily have written about our many adventures hiking and caving in New England, his impressive knowledge of our local history and folklore, or his uncanny and detailed memory of our childhood together.

Louie was an important part of my life, and I’ll greatly miss him.