The Accordion Case

Tuesday, October 31, 2023. Revised and updated Saturday, February 14, 2026.

Another autobiographical post. Lord help me.

This one is for my son Dan.
He knows why.

I am nearing seventy, which is an age that invites reflection whether you consent to it or not. My clients know that I have one sentence I deliver with theatrical fury:

There is nothing more painful than meaningless suffering.

Suffering, unfortunately, is not optional. Meaninglessness is.

I often think of family of origin as a kind of chair you are strapped into at birth. You don’t get to pick the upholstery. You don’t get to negotiate the knots. You are simply there.

If you sit still, it feels almost voluntary.
The moment you strain against it, you bruise.

The aggravation of agita.

When I was seventeen, I did not yet know how to sit in the chair.

Dedham

April, 1971.

Norfolk County Correctional Center.

My accordion teacher — Johnny “Pretty Fingers” Manginero — had arranged a concert for me there.

Johnny was not sadistic. He was surgical.

If you’ve seen Whiplash, imagine that temperament transferred to an accordion studio in suburban Massachusetts, minus the flying cymbals and felony assault.

He once screamed at me:

“JESUS CHRIST, YOU PLAY TOO FAST. You sound like a monkey grinder on uppers. You need adagio. You need patience.”

I wanted allegro.
I wanted velocity.
I wanted applause.

Johnny said, “I got just the thing. You’re playing Dedham.”

“Prison?” I asked.

He smirked.

We prepared “Lover.” I didn’t want to play it. I wanted to murder it.

Six weeks of drilling. Slower. Cleaner. More control. Less showing off.

On the morning of the performance, I passed through gates that clanged with finality. Guards escorted me to a bare room. Metal folding chair. Accordion case on my lap. I felt like an extra in Get Smart.

Two trustees entered, grinning like men who had time to kill.

They asked to inspect my case for contraband.

Then one of them said, deadpan:

“Vinny, see if you can fit inside that box. We gotta make sure it closes.”

Vinny was the smallest adult I have ever seen. A little person with the composure of a trial lawyer.

For one horrifying second I believed they meant it.

They burst into laughter. I nearly wept.

Johnny had arranged for me to arrive four hours early.
He wanted me to sit in the chair.

Harry

Harry had lost three fingers at the Chosin Reservoir and most of his remaining volatility sometime after.

A flash of rage had sealed his wife’s fate. And her mother’s.

He was never leaving Dedham.

He moved slowly. Spoke carefully. As if language itself required rationing.

“I belong here,” he told me. “Not just for what I did. For the kind of company I can handle.”

There was no self-pity in it. Just recognition.

“Predictability helps,” he said. “Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I dream about my daughter.”

Then he looked at me.

“And sometimes something unexpected happens. Like you. And I don’t have to remember to laugh.”

I was seventeen. I had no idea what to do with that.

Guermo

Guermo never settled. He vibrated. Nine years inside and still allergic to the air.

He relied on Harry the way a nervous dog watches a calmer one to know if thunder is coming.

Rage was his inheritance. He was trying, visibly, to spend it down.

Vinny

Vinny had been abandoned by a circus at fourteen.

Amphetamines by twelve. Pickpocket by thirteen. Cat burglar by twenty.

“Retail jewelry is an overrated industry,” he informed me.

He had the sharpest mind in the building and had converted it into jailhouse law. He spoke like a professor who had misplaced his campus.

“Young man,” he said, “I have an abiding interest in your case.”

The room erupted again.

I began to understand that humor is not denial. It is leverage.

Shag

My accompanist was a man named Phil, known on the outside as “Phil Thrill.”

Inside, he went by Shag.

He had been making two hundred dollars a night at the Parker House. His father convinced him he could make two thousand another way.

Bird Street. Dorchester. Quick money. No patience.

“Who the hell is Johnny?” he asked when I mentioned my teacher.

“Pretty Fingers,” I clarified.

“Yeah, I know my fingers are pretty.”

He was serving sixteen months and thirteen days. He knew the count exactly.

We played. I was fast. He was better.

Afterward, he spoke quietly.

“If you can choose the situation you’re already in,” he said, “and say, this is what I got to work with — then you don’t suffer twice.”

He paused.

“If you fight what you can’t change, you suffer twice.”

He couldn’t change the fact that he’d been dealing by nine. He couldn’t undo the father who taught him speed instead of patience.

But he could choose who he would be when he walked out.

“I ain’t nevah, evah comin’ back,” he said, voice cracking at the thought of his wife Millie and the baby he hadn’t yet held.

I believed him.

The Chair

That day in Dedham did something to me.

Johnny had known I was immature. Sheltered. Vain. Fast without depth.

He did not lecture me about stoicism.
He sent me to prison with an accordion.

There are restraints in life that do not yield to struggle.

Family. History. Temperament. The consequences of what we have done.

You can thrash against them and call it integrity.

Or you can sit — not in surrender, but in recognition — and ask:

Given that this is the chair, how shall I sit in it?

Suffering is baked into the cake.

Meaningless suffering is optional.

The men in Dedham had already paid for their thrashing. What I saw in them — in Harry’s patience, in Guermo’s effort, in Vinny’s wit, in Shag’s resolve — was something I did not yet possess:

The willingness to stop fighting reality long enough to change oneself.

At seventeen, I played “Lover” too fast.

At seventy, I understand adagio.

Be well.
Stay kind.
Play slower.
Godspeed.