The Carey music woman
By KAREN BOSSICK<br><i>The Wood River Journal~Carey</i>
Margaret Murdock is a woman of note in Carey. 
Not only does she still play organ for her church at the age of 88 but she taught hundreds of Carey youth how to play piano on the Wurlitzer piano she brought from Heber City, Utah, 60 years ago.
&#8220;I had 47 students at one time&#045;before school, after school, on Saturdays. And we&#039;d have recitals every year at Christmas and in spring. At one time I had eight students play together at the same time,&#8221; she recounts proudly.
Murdock&#039;s attention to the children is among the things that prompted members of Carey&#039;s Senior Center to nominate her for the Fifth Annual Blaine County Heritage Court. The court honors longtime residents who have made a contribution to the valley&#039;s way of life.
Murdock grew up in a log home her family moved to in 1918. Her father, a farmer from Mt. Pleasant, Utah, had sought to move the family to Canada but was rebuffed by a bitterly cold winter that wiped out much of the family's cattle.
Carey&#039;s lush grasslands were perfect for his 2,000 sheep, he said, along with the family&#039;s cattle, pigs, turkeys and geese.
&#8220;We didn&#039;t even know there was a Depression because we had our own eggs, butter and milk,&#8221; recalls Murdock.
Though a girl, Murdock took her turn with farm chores, driving a team of horses dragging a wheel-less flatbed across the ground to gather hay.
The family farm sat within spitting distance of the lava fields. But Murdock and her three brothers and three sisters rarely ventured into the lava because they were afraid of snakes.
They rode sleds to school in winter. When school was over, they took to &#8220;hookey bobbing,&#8221; riding a string of sleighs tied to the saddle horn of one of the farm horses.
In those days, Murdock said, Highway 20 wasn&#039;t plowed and the traffic was so light they could sled down the highway at Picabo Hill.

<b>Here she comes: Miss...</b>
The musically inclined Murdock played accordion in a Western band that performed songs like &#8220;The Old Grey Bonnet.&#8221; 
And everyone, she says, went to the dances at the church social hall, where a local orchestra lulled dancers with &#8220;Mood Indigo.&#8221;
&#8220;You didn&#039;t dance with the same fellow all night long,&#8221; Murdock recalls. &#8220;You&#039;d dance with young men and old&#045;they&#039;d come up to you and say, &#8216;Can I have the third dance with you?&#039; and then they&#039;d pencil you in on their card.&#8221;
Never above being mischievous, Murdock and her friends would raid neighbors&#039; chicken coops during summer, wringing the chickens&#039; necks and cooking them over an open fire. Come winter, they&#039;d take cans of unpitted olives to the movie theater, eat the olives and throw the pits at theatergoers.
But Murdock was still deemed sweet enough that she was named Miss Blaine County in 1938, going on to compete in the Miss Idaho contest.
&#8220;I remember I had to borrow a swimsuit--I never did learn to swim,&#8221; she says. &#8220;We&#039;d swim in the canals around Carey but we touched the bottom with our hands,  pulling ourselves along.&#8221;
In 1943, Murdock married Verd Murdock, whom she met during a musical mission for the Mormon Church in Philadelphia and New York. The newlyweds settled in Heber City, Utah, where Verd worked in the lead and silver mines near Park City until a friend died in a mining accident.
&#8220;Those mines scared me to death,&#8221; Murdock says. &#8220;I cried every day when he left for work. I finally talked him out of it.&#8221;
The years following World War II were tough for a young married couple. They couldn&#039;t buy a refrigerator because refrigerator manufacturing had been scrapped temporarily for the war effort. So they made a refrigerator with a wooden orange crate to which they hung a burlap over a pan of water. The water cooled the food as it seeped up the sack.
&#8220;It was a year before we got a refrigerator,&#8221; Murdock says.

<b>Peddling music</b>
Murdock had become enamored with the piano when a peddler left one for her family to try when she was 7.
&#8220;I just plunked tunes by ear, but after a week I wanted the piano so badly I cried and cried until my folks got it,&#8221; she said.
Murdock went on to major in music education at Brigham Young University, eventually returning to play at countless weddings and funerals in her hometown. She taught first grade for 14 years and second for five.
And as her own children got older, she started passing on her love of music to the town kids, teaching them such songs as &#8220;Hickory Dickory,&#8221; &#8220;Poppo the Porpoise,&#8221; &#8220;Popcorn Man,&#8221; &#8220;Liebestraume,&#8221; &#8220;The Entertainer&#8221; and &#8220;Hungarian Rhapsody.&#8221;
&#8220;She plays the piano beautifully,&#8221; says her grandson Daniel Parke, a chiropractor. &#8220;We kids loved to go for her house for dinner&#045;she made the best gravy in the world. And I remember one winter night when the lights went out for about an hour and grandma sat there at the piano, fielding requests and entertaining us until the electricity came back on.&#8221;
At 88, Murdock still teaches piano to her great-grandchildren. And, she says proudly, one of her great grandsons, Trent Parke, seems to be following in her footsteps, having just won &#036;6,500 in piano scholarships.
&#8220;I never get tired of hearing the musical scale,&#8221; she says. &#8220;It makes me feel so good to see my students progress. Music is a joy to people.&#8221; 

<span style="display: none">journal, newspaper, article, story, paper the journal, wood river journal, ketchum, hailey, bellevue, sun valley, The Carey music woman</span>