Gee Dad, It's a Wurlitzer

9/3/2026

“Gee Dad, It's a Wurlitzer”

‘Gee Dad, it’s a Wurlitzer’ was a slogan the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company used for an ad campaign in the last century, the century I’m from. I’ll tell you why Wurlitzer has a place in this story before too long, but first, a little about my father.

Daddy was mechanically inclined. He could take ailing machines apart, repair them, and reassemble them, good as new, with no parts left over. He had a ‘man cave’ in our attic, where he kept some gadgets that I wasn’t allowed to touch. I wasn’t even supposed to enter that room, so each time I snuck in, I had to eradicate all evidence of my transgression. One fascinating marvel in the forbidden room was a saltwater powered radio. You just filled a tank and the reaction between the saltwater, air, and magnesium rods generated electricity. Amazing! He had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I was caught using after the fact, because I didn’t know how to erase what I had recorded, and an object that even I was afraid to touch – a Buntline Special revolver (I’m certain he didn’t leave it loaded). There was more, but I’m digressing too much, so I’ll leave it at that.

My parents ran a heating and air conditioning company. Mom handled the office work, and Daddy went out and fixed broken furnaces. One chilly morning in 1965 at about 2 a.m., a man whose furnace had gone kaput called for service. Daddy got out of bed, drove about forty minutes to Northeast DC, and restored his heat. When it was all fixed up, the man said “I don’t have any money to pay you. I needed heat for my kids and I’m sorry.” He continued, “If you see something in my house that would be a fair trade for your labor, it’s yours.” Well, Daddy probably needed cash as much as the man needed heat, but to cut his losses, he looked around the man’s house for something. He spotted a xylophone and took that in trade.

The new toy ended up in the man-cave / attic. Despite warnings of dire consequences, we kids couldn’t resist banging on that xylophone. After a week of cacophony, Mom gave Daddy three days to get rid of the thing. She wasn’t even able to listen to her Sinatra records because of all that racket. So, Daddy packed up the infernal machine, carried it to the pawn shop, and traded it for a Wurlitzer mandolin. See – it took a while, but I finally got to the point. Mom wasn’t thrilled to have another noise making device in the house, but when she realized that it was a beautiful antique, she warmed up to it. She advised Daddy not to keep it in the attic, as the heat might damage it, so he hung it on the living room wall.

Daddy pointed at me and sternly said, “Don’t you touch that mandolin while I’m at work.” When I tell this story, I usually pause at that point, so folks will think he was using reverse psychology, hoping I would disobey him and learn to play it. But actually, no, he wasn’t - I had a tendency to accidentally break things. Once, Daddy said he was going to give me a steel ball for Christmas, “...’cause that’s the only thing he can’t break.” Mom said, “He’ll find a way.” So, there it was, the forbidden fruit on the wall, seemingly calling to me. When I finally got the nerve to take it down, which Mom somehow knew about despite my stealthiness, I was so gentle with it that she was impressed and agreed to ask Daddy if he would allow me to play it. After some debate, he reluctantly agreed.

We took the Wurlitzer to Grandpa, a retired fiddler, and got him to tune it and, importantly, show Mom how. He even found a pick and a tuning fork in his junk drawer, so I was off to the races. Daddy had a Bill Monroe album, and one by the Country Gentlemen. I tried to figure out what Bill and John Duffey were doing, but I didn’t get anywhere. I learned to play melodies fairly well, so Mom thought I was a genius, but I didn’t really learn how to play chords and improvise until years later when I got my wheels and met other musicians who showed me the ropes. I’ve been working at it ever since.

Over the years, I’ve owned a succession of mandolins, each a little better than its predecessor, but that Wurlitzer mandolin that fell into my life sparked a flame that’s still burning.

Tom Mindte

September 2026

Mom, my sister, Alice, and me with the Wurlitzer mandolin.

Wurlitzer pin, 1950s

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