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Piano II

The Source

I know that sequels seldom top the original version, but I’ve received a small bucket load of correspondence about my tour of Jacksonville’s pianos. The most common response was something along the lines of “You mentioned the worst piano in town. Is it our church’s?” Alas, I must continue to keep that little secret hidden deep in my keyboard since the folks at the church are well aware of their ivories’ illness, and, like a slightly demented maiden aunt, they have learned to cherish its eccentricities. I received one email from a local church regarding their sanctuary’s old Hammond organ. It seems as though a traveling organ-fixer told the worship committee that the thing was running low on oil. I’m not kidding. This organ needed to be oiled. His recommendation was to give it a couple of shots twice a year. Fine and dandy. Trouble was, there were three men on the committee and all three took this as a mandate to oil the organ. Being good farmers, they wanted to exceed the manufacturer’s service recommendation and oil the organ once a month…all three men, unbeknownst to the others. The result was the oiliest organ in Cass County. When the congregation (not to get specific for fear of upsetting the Methodists) finally got rid of the organ years later they found an oil spill the size of a manhole cover under their old instrument. Speaking of organs, I recently spoke at a local church and when I entered the door I was discretely informed that I might not want to sit by the organ. The lady whispered to me, “My sister plays it and she’s…well….” I had no idea what the lady was trying to tell me about her sister, but by the time I found a seat there were no others remaining other than a spot right by the mysterious organist. Once the music began I uncovered the mystery. The lady talked to her organ pedals. Pedals are a tricky thing to maneuver while wearing heels (I take my shoes off to work pedals), and that Sunday morning she was having an argument with the F-sharp. I think it was the F-sharp. And here’s another Jacksonville instrument I can’t mention by name. It’s a fine funeral home run by true professionals, but while playing for a recent funeral I ran into a bit of a problem. A snake. The keyboard is located in a small enclave separate from the chapel so I felt free to take off my shoes to work the pedal. (I did not talk to the pedals.) I guess the snake had smuggled itself into the chapel in a bouquet of fresh flowers. Unsatisfied with the service going on in the other room, it made its way to the very small room where I was playing and it was somewhere between the second and third verses of How Great Thou Art when it decided to slither under my pedals. I’d worn sandals that day. Bare feet on cold pedals with a snake somewhere under the lower octave. I think it’s significant to note that you can indeed play How Great Thou Art with both feet tucked up onto the organ bench, Indian style. I received a call from one of our neighboring communities telling me about the day the church was celebrating some sort of anniversary and by special request the guest organist was asked to play the congregation’s old pump organ. No one had touched the organ in years, and frankly they weren’t sure if it would even play. It did..sort of… at least as well as the family of raccoons would allow. When the first dulcet tones blasted forth from the old pumper a mother raccoon and two little coon-ettes came scampering out of the bellows, stared a moment at the preacher, then high-tailed it to the back door and free from the now-hysterical congregation. One advantage to attending a church without air-conditioning: the back doors are left open. A local lady wrote to bring me up to date on the Assembly of God string buster. I’d written about a young man who pounded the baby grand so hard that he’d frequently break strings. She told me that he then moved to play for a congregation at the Northminster Presbyterian and one night a string broke loose and wrapped itself around his mother-in-law. He’s now pummeling a full-sized grand piano at a Springfield church, but the piano is up on a platform, safely away from his mother-in-law. By the way, he’s now breaking strings on the grand. Now that’s my kind of piano player! A final story told to me by a man in the produce aisle of Festival Foods. He said that his church had a piano that would not stay in tune. The church was paying a tuner to come every two months to wrest the wretched strings back to their proper pitch to the tune of 70 bucks a pop. The church had an outdoor Easter sunrise service and decided to move the piano to the town park a few blocks away, but the Presbyterian piano movers neglected to tie it down securely. When they rounded the corner of the park the piano flipped and although two men were riding in the truck bed, they couldn’t stop the Hammond’s trajectory. They stopped the truck righted the piano, and unloaded it for the service. According to my Festival Foods informant, they’ve not had to tune the piano since.. some fifteen years now. Even pianos need to be taught to behave and this one had learned its lesson.