Tickling The Ivories?

It was always there - that upright piano in the Heimel household. First in the dining room that's now a kitchen and later in the front room, the room that I had shared as a bedroom with my little brother before we all moved upstairs for our own bedrooms.

The piano with its holiday garb.
An open house in the 1950s.
Neighbor Eppie Bradley on the left.
Can't identify the woman with cigarette.

My mother always claimed it was a good piano - Kohler and Campbell - and I remember Mr. Ellis Munyon coming to the house in a multi-day process to work some kind of magic on the inside of the piano, the cover raised and the place where the music goes pulled off, his tools spread across the piano bench on green felt.

And he fixed the ivories - the covering on the keys with missing ones replaced with those salvaged from other pianos. But afterwards they came loose from their keys and were kept in a little plastic bag in the drawer of the china cupboard in that big old house on North East Street.

That old piano, painted a neutral light gray, was settled in its place on an outside wall through my mother's decor changes in the front room - the orange and gold phase and then the light gray phase. 

The top of the piano was a favorite spot for Christmas decorations - little winter scenes with that white snow substitute you unrolled and spread like a tablecloth, dotted with cotton balls. White plastic reindeer and those little glittery houses with the cellophane windows. Later we'd cut greens from the bottoms of the Christmas trees my dad sold each winter in the side yard and spread them on top, careful to put down a plastic tablecloth to protect the piano. I'd bring out the candles Mom had made from blogs of paraffin frosted with whipped paraffin, white, green, red, some dipped in glitter. We didn't light them - they were just for decoration.

I took piano lessons from Mrs. Simons who lived at the foot of Seventh Street just across the bridge, a quick walk up the riverbank. She also had an upright piano in her living room with a comfortable chair next to it where she'd sit, sometimes nursing her baby during my lesson. "Curve your fingers, Janie," she'd scold. "Count, Janie."

I made some progress through the color-coded Schaum piano methods - I think I was in the orange book when I finally quit lessons after begging my mother to allow that to happen. She told me at the time that one day I'd regret it - and, as always, she was right. I have retained some skills and am much better at counting - likely due to the tutelage of Mr. Wilcox when I took up the flute in fifth grade.

When the day came that my mother wanted it gone - likely a plan to redecorate that room again to accommodate her blue phase - we agreed it could come to our house. There was already a Metzger family piano in the living room but it was deemed un-tuneable so it went into storage in the shop and the Kohler and Campbell came to Crandall Hill.

That process involved a truck, several family members and a repurposed stone boat. I have a memory of it being dragged across a spring-muddy yard with a tractor, the threat of toppling very real - real enough that I removed myself from the scene.

It's lived here ever since. Its big moment came when Johnny Costa of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood fame came to Potter County with his trio to play a concert at the Consistory and stayed with us on the farm. He was hesitant to play it because of the missing ivories and the possibility of cutting his fingers but those familiar Neighborhood tunes spilled from the piano.

But mostly that piano just took up space in the corner of our front room. I played it from time to time and Arthur played it from time to time and daughter Kate took piano lessons for a time. When I changed the color scheme in our front room, I painted the piano a glossy black.

And the day came when I wanted it gone - though it's not really gone.

And in the drawer of my china cabinet,  a little plastic bag of ivories.