MOUNT VERNON — When asked his age, Johnny Neiderhouser grinned and pretended to think hard. Then with a wink, he said, “I’m 49 ... backwards.”
Neiderhouser, 94, who resides at Country Club Retirement Campus, grew up and lived many years in Danville, where he ran the City Meats butcher shop founded by his father in 1920. He put in 46 years of full-time employment with Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and also earned a reputation as a famous baseball pitcher on local teams.
In fact, back in the heyday of his illustrious baseball career, in the 1930s, Johnny was recruited by none other than Branch Rickey, the scout who broke baseball’s color barrier by recruiting and signing Jackie Robinson in 1945 and by recruiting the first Latin-American player, Roberto Clemente.
But what Neiderhouser remains famous for, decades after he retired from PPG, sold the shop and left baseball behind, is playing “the bones.”
Bones are a rustic musical percussion instrument that keeps time with, and highlights, the rhythm of a song. Their sound is the crack of two flat wooden clappers snapping together. Held between the player’s fingers, they’re flicked hard and fast, and a real maestro can make double-clicks and snappy stutters and even play two sets of bones at once, two clappers held in each hand.
“If I want to scare people, I use both pair,” said Johnny. “What, are you ashamed of me?” he asked his laughing son.
“No, no,” said Bob Neiderhouser, “I’m proud of you. You’re just funny.
“Dad has been pretty active all his life,” said Bob. “At 87, he was on a horse, after a back operation. He also played basketball and golf. He played golf up until a year ago at Tomahawk. He still practices his swing. Dad is a natural-born athlete, and a very talented person.”
Johnny’s favorite instrument is called the bones because the earliest players used animal bones.
“Dad would pick up a pair of real bones in the butcher shop and Mom would get mad at him for it. She’d say, ‘Get those noisy things out of here,’” said Bob.
“But I didn’t,” Johnny added with a grin. “Bones were invented because they didn’t have snare drums back then, about 80 years ago, to keep the rhythm for a song.”
Johnny’s bones are about 85 years old, and they came from a traveling medicine show.
“These bones are curious things,” said Johnny. “When I was about 9 years old, an old Indian came to Danville. He had two people playing mandolins and a guy playing bones. I was just fascinated. I said, ‘Would you teach me how to play those?’ and he said, ‘Yes, and you can have these.’ After that, all the boys in town carried a pair of bones in their pocket and knew how to play.”
Those vintage bones, well seasoned now, are two flat pieces of plain wood about half an inch thick.
“These are not big and they’re not wide,” said Johnny. “These are just right.”
But a few years ago, Johnny’s daughter, Dee Mickley, thought he could do better.
“Dee said I ought to have better ones, so she sent away and got these. They cost $14,” he explained, holding two curved black-ivory pieces.
But he doesn’t like their sound. The new bones make a smaller, thinner, higher-pitched tone; the old ones have a deeper, larger, more satisfying snap, he said.
“These are just right,” Johnny said again, picking up the old pair.
Whenever the Walhonding Rube Band is in town, the band members invite Johnny to join them, sit right up front and play along.
“I have so much fun,” he said. “Any song that has rhythm, I can play along with it. When I hear the rhythm, I can play right along.”
Johnny broke into a rendition of “Show Me The Way to Go Home,” and claims he once played it in church. Since there’s a line in the song that goes, “Had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went right to my head,” that’s doubtful, said Bob. Still, he can recall watching his father at church, playing bones at the back door, surrounded by children.
At the retirement center, people stop Johnny often to ask him to play their favorite tune. “Have you got your bones with you?” they ask. He always does, right in his back pocket.
“If I didn’t have these to play, I wouldn’t want to be here, wouldn’t want to be anyplace,” Johnny said.
He wants to pass on his knowledge, preferably to someone in his family who will carry on the tradition. But the bones aren’t easy to master and, so far, no one has had the knack.
Johnny and his wife, Merry, who founded The Station Break years ago and thought up the name too, shared a love for horses when they first met.
“Mom lived over by Bladensburg and had a horse named Boots,” said Bob. “Dad took a shine to Mom, and mom let dad ride Boots. She told him, ‘Now to get the horse’s attention, you have to put your foot in the stirrup twice.’ She knew full well that that would make Boots mad and he’d buck dad off. Dad went flying. Mom thought that was funny.”
Johnny added, “She laughed and laughed and said, ‘I knew he’d throw you.’
“One Saturday night in 1939, we were going to a dance hall in Mount Vernon,” he said. “It was raining and my coat got wet. I told Merry, ‘We can’t go in there and dance. My coat’s all wet. What’ll we do?’ Mary said, ‘Well, let’s go down to Greenup and get married.’ So we did.”
Merry has been gone nearly two years; they were married for 67 years.
“Dad always made the best of everything,” said Bob. “I think that’s the secret to making it to 94.”
“I’m always happy,” said Johnny. “In fact, this is the happiest day of my life.”
