Music has been one of the major defining elements of our family.  If I were to list the elements that make our family what it is, I'd have to list the Church and the gospel of Jesus Christ as number one.  They have had the greatest influence.  Number two would be the farm, and music would be number three.

The best purchase I ever made was Margie's piano.  We bought it in 1973 or 1974.  We'd heard an ad on the radio from a company in Idaho that was in the area repossessing a piano.  They wanted to resell it locally for a discounted price.  I called the advertised number, and bought the piano for $500.

Margie needed a piano.  She's good on the piano.  Making music and being a mother are the things she does best.

I was originally drawn to Margie by her personality and her looks.  I think that I probably recognized her from the premortal realm.  But it was her music that caused me to fall in love with her.  We'd been at her friend Narn's cabin at McEwen.  Jim Fuller was giving Margie and I a ride back to Baker.  I don't think that we'd been on a date.  I think that we were all just together at a party, and that Jim was our transportation back to Baker.

Margie had her ukulele along.  All the way back to town she played her ukulele and sang.  I had never heard anything like it!  I was amazed and enraptured.  I told Jim afterward that her singing was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.  I really think that I fell in love with her during that music-filled trip back to town.  That showed me her soul like nothing else could.  From then on she was the standard by which I measured every other acquaintance.  That evening was followed by a 5-year courtship during which I worked hard to make myself worthy of her and to convince her that she needed to love me, too.

When we were finally married, the ukulele went along on our honeymoon.  As we drove Margie taught me her songs.  She had a huge repertoire.  She taught me the words, she taught me the harmony, and she taught me how to play the ukulele.  We've been harmonizing ever since.

The ukulele went with us to Morocco.  We sang and harmonized there, too.  We also went regularly to the base at Kenitra where Margie could practice on a piano.

Margie plays a number of instruments, but the piano is her instrument of choice.  She played viola in high school orchestra, but she took private piano lessons for many years from Margaret Coats.  Margie was the piano accompanist for the high school choirs.  Her first church callings were to serve as the pianist for junior Sunday School, and also to be ward organist.  She was only a girl at the time.

In Morocco, during the nine months that we were at Haines before college, and at BYU we didn't have a piano.  It wasn't until we moved into the house on the hill at Haines and heard the radio ad that we got a piano for Margie.

She sat down at the piano and played and played.  Our house was filled with self-made music.  She sat little Nathan on the piano bench beside her and taught him all the Primary songs.  He sang his heart out.  Every other child got the same treatment and training.  Consequently our children all love music.

Many of them were taught to play piano by their mother.  All of them now like to sing.  Throughout our married life one or another of our children would grab their mother, lead her to the piano, and make her sit down and play while he sat beside her and sang.  Whenever she sat down to play she was quickly surrounded by her progeny who sang along and requested songs.  As adults, they're still doing it.  Matt and Aaron drag their mother and every available male to the piano for barbershop singing.  Danny drags his mother to the piano so that the two of them can sing western music.  Ivy makes her mother sit down several times daily to be her piano accompanist while she plays violin.

Margie and her piano have been the centerpiece of our home.  The piano, without doubt, is the best purchase I ever made.

Not everyone can carry a tune and sing.  All of our kids can.  Is that a matter of genetics, or is it the fact that they've been surrounded by singing since they were in the womb?  It's probably both.

My mother always sang as she worked.  She also whistled.  I admired that, even though she often quoted:  "Whistling women and cackling hens, always come to no good end."  I recall working to teach myself how to whistle when I was in seventh grade.  I was walking down a street in Baker to go have lunch at Mac's and Joyce's house.  I practiced how to hold my lips, and I've been practicing ever since.  I consider myself a premier whistler.  I whistle and sing while I work.  I always have a song in my head.

I'm glad that I can sing.  I wish that I could play an instrument.  I'm glad that I can whistle because I always have a substitute instrument with me, and it doesn't require hands to use.

Bedtime at our house always meant bedtime songs.  It was easy to get reluctant kids to go to bed if we'd promise to sing to them.  Many were the evenings that I took requests, and sang every song I knew.  It was a nightly tradition.  Either Margie or I had to do it.

All that music insured that music would be a part of all of our children's lives.  They each learned to play instruments.  They play piano, organ, clarinet, flute, guitar, violin, mandolin, bass, banjo, and a few more.

Nathan found an old broken-down violin in an antique shop, restored it, and had Duane Boyer give him lessons to learn to play it.  Seven-year-old Ivy was intrigued.  When Nathan went off to work each day, she'd sneak into his bedroom and play it.  She was soon taking lessons, too, quickly took herself beyond Duane's teaching abilities, and had to graduate to other teachers.

Duane's forte was with banjo, guitar and mandolin.  Aaron had been playing guitar.  Duane began giving him lessons.  Adam made a banjo.  Duane taught him how to play it.  Nathan built a bass out of a washtub.  He called it a "phlamph."  A bluegrass group was evolving.  It needed a mandolin, so Danny took up that instrument.  Duane came every Monday night and gave lessons in exchange for dinner and help from the boys around his farm.  It was a great symbiotic relationship, and gave birth to the Kerns bluegrass group.  The kids are good, the group is fun, and making bluegrass music together has been a wonderfully unifying thing for the family.  It all began around the piano.