The Kramer Family Orchestra
 
     Our musical heritage began the generation before, when my father and his 
three sisters and eight brothers were growing up near Seaforth on another farm.  
One of them had won a violin on a raffle – a classy raffle!  They figured out 
all about music from that violin.  Eventually they acquired all the trumpets, 
horns, trombones, reeds, drums and strings to make up both a band and an 
orchestra right there in the family.  They ordered music sight unseen from New 
York.  The band played at holiday celebrations when the brothers weren’t playing 
baseball and the orchestra played at dances.  Mother sometimes played piano in 
the Kramer orchestra before she and dad were married.  Often the horses pulling 
their buggy had to find the way home. The musicians were all asleep because they 
had to get up at dawn to work in the fields.