Roll Over Beethoven!

With all the hullabaloo about birthdays in A.P. Lit class, I almost let December 16, 2008 slip by without a nod to my old buddy and comrade-in-arms L.V. Beethoven, who lived just up the street from me on Terrace Drive in good old Medford, Oregon.
There are so many stories I could tell about Ludwig that I hardly know where to begin. Those days improvising minuets while waiting for sodas at the Hornet’s Nest down the street from Hedrick Junior High. Or the hilarious practical jokes he would play on poor old Mr. Schlosselmeier in A.P. Symphonic Music class at Medford High, as, for example, the time he balanced a No. 2 pencil straight up on the lovable professor’s oaken chair. Schlosselmeier nailed a high C none of us till then had thought humanly possible.
But I guess my favorite experience with L.V. came one night when we were on our way to the Armory for a Smiths concert. He was dressed to the nines – knee breeches, frock coat and buckle shoes. But no powdered wig – he hated those with a passion that I would call Romantic, with a capital “R”!
Whistling a tune that could have been by Wolfgang Von Morrissey (but I don’t think it was), Ludwig amused himself by tossing a penny high into the air with one hand, then catching it behind his back with the other. He was a genius at that!
We were so absorbed that when a street corner came up a bit suddenly, Ludwig stepped off the edge abruptly and lost his sense of rhythm. Appalled, he watched his penny roll parallel to the curb around the corner, where it dropped neatly into a sewer grating.

"Gott in Himmel!" cried Beethoven. "Dott vas mein lucky pfennig!"

You never saw such a fit as that German exchange student threw at the corner of Main and Riverside. It was all I could do to calm him down before he ripped our Smiths tickets up and sent the shreds the way of the penny.
“Calm down, Beethoven,” I implored the headstrong Teuton. But he was deaf to my pleas, so I took him by both shoulders and shook him until his fury passed, then gave him a little pep talk.
“Look, Ludwig. Do what you always do when fate seems to turn against you. Convert the experience to art as only you know how. Remember when Scott Spiegelberg got a swelled head after he was named all-state quarterback for the Black Tornados? You were going to give up on that symphony you wrote for him until I told you could just name it for any old hero. And that’s what you did – you called it the Eroica. And it was the best darned symphony you ever wrote!"
“Dott’s whright,” he muttered, wiping a tear of rage from his ruddy cheek.
Later, after a great concert, we returned to his apartment overlooking Bear Creek and had a nightcap before I headed home. Ludwig sat down at the piano and, quick as tossing a coin, he’d composed a slick new tune. It sounded vaguely like what he’d been whistling, but way more rockin’, if you know what I mean.
“Wow, man, that’s great!” I said (secretly delighted that my scheme seemed to have worked). “What do you call it?”
“I vill call it, Za Whrage uber ein lost Pfennig,” he said with a slight smile, and he ran his hand through his unruly brown hair as if to say: "The whrage isn't just uber, it's over. Alles ist gut."

"Nice going, L.V.," I said admiringly.
And you know what? You can hear that fantastic little ditty right to this very day.
Happy Birthday, Ludwig Van, wherever du bist.