Steve Medved here. I wrote the list about Gene Ballard and evidently his
daughter
found the e-mail with Google. Below are the two e-mails I received from her
along
with my reply.
Steve
Hi. Gene Ballard of Gardena, California was my dad. It's good to see
his name in print. I hope that all of you had good experiences with
him. He was an honest man who loved what he did, repairing phonos.
Did any of you get a chance to visit his home museum? The Oliphant
Brothers learned a lot from him when they were teens and just
beginning to collect. Dad passed away in 1994 in Chico, CA. My
sister and I now have some of his rarer models of phonographs and
music boxes.
Thanks,
Eugenia (Gene) Ballard-Moretti
Dear Steve, I can't begin to tell you how delighted I am to hear such
kind words about my father. And yes, you can send my letters to the
whole list. I would like that.My father was an exceptional man, a
"jack of all trades." He loved working with his hands. Back in the
70's on a trip to Europe with The International Musical Box Society (of
which he was a member) he purchased two Ruege music box cylinders and
then built two beautiful boxes of rare woods to house them. They were
gifts to my sister and me.
He had quite a
workshop, complete with a metal lathe and one for woodworking and had
customers as far away as New Zealand, South Africa, and England where he
had a secret source for some of his diamond-point phono needles. If he
couldn't find a gear or whatever for a phonograph, music box, or a
Mills Violano, he made one.I once watched him tear apart a
Mills Violano Virtuoso (he had three of them in his collection) and
rebuild it from the ground up, including parts on the violin. An
interesting side story is the three matchbooks he found inside it: They
were from "Big Jim" Colosimo's nightclub in Chicago. (Colosimo ran
Chicago's underground, and was a pimp as well.) Al Capone's name was
listed as "Manager" on the matchbook covers. I still have them and they
will go to my sons, the youngest of whom is named Eugene for my dad.
His
collection included the Violanos, a Wurlizter Orchestra Piano LX, a
Wurlizter band wagon with 16 brass trumpets and two drums ( he
completely rebuilt that bandwagon and it was so loud that it woke up the
whole neighborhood when he played it), an automated banjo, several
automatic changer upright disk music boxes, a dozen or more Victor phono
models, including a Victor VI that my husband and I found in Mexico
City in 1975 (Dad already had a wooden horn for one, so we gave it to
him), the Berliner used as the Victor logo in front of which he had a
life-sized Nipper, (see my story about Nipper below), an opera, a couple
of concerts, and goodness only knows how many Edisons, cylinder
cabinets, and etc. There was a Wurlitzer 1015 that he purchased new for
his Juke Box route in Los Angeles (he put jukes into small cafes and
bars around the LA area during 1946-1948 and kept the 1015 when he sold
the business. I would wake up in the morning to the music of Glenn
Miller, the Harmonicats, and the Mills Brothers.) He also had an Ivers
and Pond player piano with a couple of hundred rolls and let each of his
8 grandkids pump the pedals and sing along with him. There were
wonderful beer and Coca Cola trays, racks of 78 rpm records, needle
tins, etc. etc. etc. :-) In 1959, he purchased an 18" metal "Nipper"
with glass eyes. It was devoid of paint, and being a "budding artist" I
repainted it for him. I still have Nipper and the Victor VI.
As
a young man from Mississippi, dad worked the "swing" on carnivals and
met my mother in Arizona when she rode his ferris wheel. That night the
carnival packed up and moved on. They wrote each other and when the
carnival returned the next year to her town, they married. Dad was also
a magician and plied that trade in the early 1930s before I was born.
My mother was his assistant onstage and off. When I was little he
would put on magic acts for my birthday parties and halloween parties,
and continued to do so for his grandchildren and the kids in his Gardena
neighborhood. He was a member of the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, an
exclusive club for magicians.
But the trade
that fed his family for many years was refrigeration and
air-conditioning, from ice cream parlors in Texas to casinos in Las
Vegas and he carried a lunch box to work for many years. In 1942 we
moved to Long Beach, CA, and Dad went to work in the Wilmington, CA, or
San Pedro, CA, shipyards (I forget which), where he helped put the
refrigeration into the morgue of the "Comfort" hospital ship during
WWII. He was elected as Business Manager of the Air-Conditioning and
Refrigeration Union of Los Angeles in 1952. At that time it was the
largest union of its kind in the United States. It still may be.
Anyway,
to answer your question about my dad's fishing: From the time he was a
kid, Dad was always a fisherman, mostly flyrod, but he taught me how to
use a casting rod, and he, my mother, and I camped out in a tent on the
King's River in King Canyon's National Park many times. He was also a
great fisherman, and we had many a trout dinner on those campouts. In
1978, my parents moved from Gardena, CA, to Paradise, CA. Their house
almost overlooked a part of the Feather River, so he got in plenty of
fishing during those years. When he was 83, he started showing signs of
Parkingsons Disease. When my mother died the same year, he came to
live with me and my husband in Chico, CA.
How I
loved that man!
Thanks to my parents interest
in phonographs and antiques, when my husband retired from the Air Force
in 1973, we became antique dealers, and although I am now 74 years old,
I'm still in the business!
All my best,Eugenia
P.S.
Thanks for letting me bend your ear. I've really rambled on, so if you
want, please feel free to edit this email. Age is a great excuse for
many things! :-)
On
Apr 21, 2010, at 8:24 PM, Steven Medved wrote:
Hello Eugenia,
I
believe your e-mail only went to me, I can send it to the whole list if
you like. I am thrilled beyond words to get this e-mail from you. I
loved Gene, he was such a nice man, willing to explain things and do
work at very reasonable prices, not to mention he was very honest. I
started to collect phonographs back in 1982 and I found Gene around
1986. This was before the internet so phonograph repair people were
hard to find and you had to write letters and wait for the replies.
Back in 1986 I
contacted Gene and he wrote and answered my questions and did some work
for me. I purchased the last of his 2 and 4 minute stylus and still
have the small Ziplock bags with the red plastic labels that say H
stylus and C bars and C stylus on the other. In his June 23 89 hand
written letter to me he said "I 82 next month - "July" so I think its
about time I go fishing"
I have kept the letters and the bags
because his help meant a great deal to me. I always wondered what
happened after he went fishing. I was very impressed with Gene and his
work.
I have a
friend in Australia I met at a phonograph show who had a lady with the
last name of Ballard on his e-mail list and I thought it was Gene's
daughter so I sent an e-mail to her, when I found out it was not Gene's
daughter I wrote the letter to the list and no one knew what Gene did
after he retired at 82 from the phonograph business.
So, if I may ask did
he get a chance to go fishing and relax? I will always treasure the
memories of Gene and his kindness, I never met him in person. I keep
his letters in the old cabinet where my valuable phonograph papers,
catalogs, and other rare items are.
Best regards,
Steven
Medved
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