Sometimes I find myself taking things on first view without inspection instead of asking questions or looking for details that don’t present themselves initially. It’s lazy and worsens one’s ability to be critical.
When I was cleaning out my grandmother’s apartment in Philly with my mom and sister, my sister found this old picture with musicians performing. It was very “me” to say the least, so I brought it back to Brooklyn with me.
Flash forward a couple weeks. I went on an overnight trip to Philly with my roommate Paul to see Ryan Adams. We stayed at my parent’s house and when my mom asked what he thought of the picture, it dawned on me that he hadn’t seen it yet since we have conflicting schedules. When we got back to the apartment I showed him the picture and he asked if I knew anything about it.
It reignited my desire to find out more details, so I googled “Sam Ashkynase Conductor” because they were the only words that we easily legible on the band sign in the picture. The first thing that came up was Sam Ash’s wiki page. For those who don’t know, Sam Ash Music is one of the most successful music instrument retail chains in the country. This led me to 3 theories on why my grandparents had this picture:
- I had a family member in the band.
- I’m related to Sam Ash somehow.
- Sam Ash’s family were friends with my grandfather’s family (both of Austria-Hungarian descent)
Paul, interested in helping me out, tracked down one of the current top execs at Sam Ash Music (via Linked In). He then figured out the email address formats for Sam Ash employees (ie first.last@company.com), so I contacted what I thought to be the email address for that exec (it thankfully didn’t bounce back). Concurrently, I emailed my parents, sister, uncle, and cousins to let them know about this, to which my mom replied that either of them could be theoretically possible since my great grandfather moved from Austria to New York City.
As of now, I’m still waiting on a response from Sam Ash, but it boggles me what one picture, pushing myself to look for the details, and investigating further can do. It’s about the picture, but it’s not at the same time because there’s a pleasure in finding things out…Richard Feyman would agree.
UPDATE: I got a response from Sam Ash Music and should be meeting with them soon
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