She knew that Leora Wilson could play the piano and that the Wilson girls played in the Dexter band, so she said they could have her pump organ since she didn’t play it anymore. While working on Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression, I became acquainted with Mary Wilt, a neighbor of the Wilsons back then. I enjoyed playing it and had figured out how to repair the bellows when needed it. The Dexter church eventually traded the pump organ for a Hammond electronic organ, which I enjoyed playing, but if I’d had the money at the time, I would still own that old pump organ. The expression “pull out all the stops” refers to using all the knobs of an organ at the same time. You can change the sound by using the stops, which are pull knobs that add extra features. The keys operate reeds, so when you press the key, air from the bellows flows up the reed and makes a sound. Taken about 1961, First Presbyterian Church, Dexter, Iowa

Eight of us are Neal cousins! Aunt Nadine is at the back right. (The rear-view mirror is to be able to coordinate music with ushers, the pastor, and even when the choir processed in from behind the organist. That means that while you’re playing the keyboard, you also need to pump the bellows that made it play! The pump organ is the instrument on the left. I’d played piano for Sunday School, but the organ was a pump organ. When I was a junior in high school, Aunt Nadine was pregnant and needed substitutes at the organ and piano.

Aunt Nadine recruited us for a youth choir, which eventually became the main choir. Dexter had such a wonderful music teacher, Ruth Sellers, so in no time at all we could read music. We Neal cousins went to the Dexter school, just a couple of blocks from the church. Because so many choir members were from farm families, several months during the year, the choir became smaller. During my growing up years, we worshiped at the Presbyterian Church in Dexter, where my Aunt Nadine (Neal) Shepherd was the pianist, organist (a pump organ), and choir director.

How to play pump organ