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Moving a piano

Newly retired from teaching, my parents are undertaking a massive reevaluation of everything in their house that's not nailed down. Quickly they spotted a piano in the living room. I had played it for eight years, but I don't have space for it at my place, so out it goes. Fortunately Andy (blog, MySpace music page) had the space and the required venture capital. Why not pay for it with beef from a bull that had got a bit too unruly last fall!

So the weekend came to move the piano. I got up early at 8 a.m. Andy had already been up many hours, in which time he probably ate a big breakfast, read the news, watched the birds, fed the animals, cleaned the house, and maybe painted a room or two and put in a new sink. And he got some scrap lumber and built a platform for the piano to bridge between the truck bumper and the front step of the house.

The piano lifting crew included Andy, his brother Tom, my dad, and me, but three people turned out to be enough, and the platform made it a straight shot into Andy's 1985 Chevy K-10 pickup. Andy strapped it in, and I followed him down the street in my car, taking these pictures:







Andy's platform:



Tom and Andy set the piano down. House still shaking when picture was taken:



Look at that, a piano!



Andy's truck: ready for the next thing my parents want to get rid of.



I asked Andy what's next. The piano (a Wurlitzer) hasn't been tuned since 1997, so that will be the first task. An important D key is out of tune, and if you want to play any of the other keys, they're out of tune too.

Andy hopes to learn to sightread, play every scale, play some simple songs, compose his own music, and finally, entertain polite crowds from a revolving rotunda at the Eastwood Mall. He can already play A Long December by the Counting Crows.

While I wait, I'm going to check out Andy's latest study of local peacock behavior.


2 comments:

Mars Girl said...

Scott, you're so funny... you make even moving a piano sound like an adventure. You want to transcribe my daily events on my blog for me now? ;)

Scott Teresi said...

This adventure didn't actually happen... it was all an April Fools joke, so I would have something to blog about! Moving a piano in real life is too much work. I just staged it and took pictures.