Let me quote the man himself:
"Like my good friend Myron Floren, I too was born on a farm and became fascinated by the accordion at a very early age. In fact my earliest clear memory is of crawling across the kitchen floor of our sod farmhouse towards my father, who was playing the push-button accordion he had brought from the old country. I was drawn as if by a magnet, and when he allowed me to press my fingers on a few of the pearl keys, and produce a few wavering notes on my own, I was in heaven!
I practiced on a variety of cheap instruments in my boyhood, but when I was 17 I went into our town of Strasburg, N.D. to hear a famous accordionist of the day, Tom Gutenburg. He had the first piano accordion I had ever seen, and when I heard him play I knew I had to have one just like it."
Lawrence Welk