Confessions Of A Real Life Schroeder

How I Discovered Music

Beautiful nature

I grew up in sunny Southern California, first living in South Pasadena and then, at around the age of five, we moved to La Canada. This was originally a little hamlet tucked into the foothills next to Pasadena, before they put the 210 freeway through.

At that time, La Canada was a very rural place and, to me, actually quite magical. There were large groves of Oak trees and a wilderness sort of park next to a swamp, which was bordered by the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, or JPL.

It was here that I discovered my intense love of nature, spending countless hours romping through the park or the foothills. I was infamous for carrying about live creatures in my pocket; a legless lizard, a turtle or a frog or two. I would always ask whatever hapless adult neighbor I saw if they wanted to see ‘my critter.’ In the spring, when the tadpoles hatched at the park, my friends and I would carry buckets full of frogs back home. The park has now, alas, become a frisbee golf course and the swamp has been drained.

I was an early reader and had decided that Dick and Jane had no discernable literary motives and had begun to read the works of Jules Verne and Mark Twain.

My father also had a rather neglected record collection, consisting of a mixed bag of classics to popular things like Herb Alfred And The Tijuana Brass. I was actually the only one who ever played the records and, one eventful day, I picked out a record quite randomly. It was in a very plain green album cover and the company was Angel Records.

Well, this happened to be a recording of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony and, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s called The Pastorale because each movement depicts a different scene in nature.

This was a transcendental experience for me. I didn’t need to read the record notes to know what this music was about and this started my long standing love of the classics, Beethoven in particular, since we were kindred souls in our deep love of nature.

Thus I became the Peanuts character Schroeder; mad about Beethoven.

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