So he decided to buckle down after being encouraged to come back to Decatur for 1994. He came back, all right...and finished fifth in the Regular Division competition.
Jim found a direction, all right. By now, living in Sioux City, IA (his home from 1988 to 1997), Jim continued to find uprights to practice on in church basements...and continued basically teaching himself, but now he added the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest as another classroom.
Jim moved back to Omaha, NE in 1997 (a better job was the reason); two years later, he added another competition to enter. He found it at the Old-Time Country Music Festival, then held in Avoca, IA (forty miles east of Omaha). Jim's done better at the festival's ragtime piano contest than at the Illinois competition. In Iowa, he finished third in 1999, 2000, 2004, and 2006, fifth in 2002 and 2003, and fourth in 2007. (The Old-Time Country Music Festival moved to Missouri Valley, IA in 2003, one year after the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest relocated to the Hotel Pere Marquette in Peoria, IL. The Iowa event will switch to the Plymouth County Fairgrounds in Le Mars, IA, in 2008.)
In 1996, Jim started playing nursing homes, first while still living in Sioux City, then continuing to do so after returning to Omaha. The next year, he added the Omaha Children's Museum as a venue. While playing once a month at an Omaha nursing home, Ambassador Omaha, Jim went on to play twice a week at the OCM (sometimes once a week). And at the museum, Jim liked it best when the children started tickling the ivories. In mid-July 2006, Jim decided to take a hiatus from performing at the OCM to launch the Great Plains Ragtime Society, a club dedicated to (1) promoting old-time piano in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area and (2) facilitating a local ragtime festival. (The museum's recent remodeling and Jim's increased workload made it more than a hiatus.)
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