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vibrante!

cammeyer

A man was walking around Dover when he happened upon a little antique shop, so he went in and took a look around. Way up on a high shelf he saw a little brass mouse figurine, and he really liked it. He asked the owner how much it was, and the guy said, “It’s £20 for the mouse, and £50 Mousefor the story that goes with it.”

Well, the man didn’t care about any old story, he just liked the little brass mouse, so he paid the guy £20 and walked out with the mouse in a brown paper bag. As he was walking home, he noticed the figurine was hollow with two little holes. Holding it up to his mouth, it made a melodious whistle. No sooner that he started, he was being followed by three little mice. When he stopped, they stopped. When he turned left, they turned left.

“Whoa, this is creeping me out,” he thought.

As he walked, the mice were joined by more mice, until our hero looked like the Pied Piper. He started to run, and he wound up at the edge of Dover’s White Cliffs. All the mice in town are right behind him. He is so freaked out that he throws the bag with the brass mouse over the cliff and into the water, and all the little mice jump after it, fall into the ocean, and drown.

“Man, this is weird!” he says. He goes back to the antique store, and the owner doesn’t seem surprised to see him. “Ahhh, you’ve come back to hear the story!” he says to our dilapidated hero.

“No, man,” says he, “I was just wondering if you have any little brass banjo players?”

Yeah, I fobbed you off with a banjo joke. I brought more work home with me tonight. I thought I was supposed to be semi-retired or something.

But don’t be sad — look at this beautiful banjo up for sale on eBay. It’s a Cammeyer Vibrante. If you ain’t never seen no banjo like ‘at before, it’s because it’s a zither banjo. A British thing that never made it back over the pond, for all kinds of reasons.

Well, Alfred Cammeyer, the inventor of the zither banjo, was an American, but he was stranded in London and forced to invent weird banjos to survive. We do what we must!

June 8, 2016 — 10:39 pm
Comments: 19