Isn’t it Grand

Posted on September 21, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

We don’t think much about our home furnishings unless the pets have torn them to shreds and replacement is inevitable.  The most likely time to replace furniture is when we are moving to a new home or apartment and a change of décor is in order.  Some furniture is special and will follow you forever.  However, there is one iconic item that always poses special challenges in good times and bad, and that is the piano.

For many homes in our part of the world, the piano was the centrepiece of the living room, if not the entire house.  Long before the advent of television and the internet, the piano was the primary source of entertainment for a whole generation of our ancestors.  A good fiddle player and an accomplished sidekick on the piano could entertain the entire neighborhood well into the night.  The other part of that winning combination was often alcohol and tobacco.

Most pianos I have seen are the garden variety and a few were even less so.  I remember in my youth that a few of us, living in Victoria at the time, pooled our meagre resources and bought a piano for less than $100.  I don’t think it was a Steinway.  More like a beer stein.  Somehow my sister could miraculously get a tune out of it.  And the more we partied, the better it sounded.  You know how that goes.  One fateful night, at the end of our tenure on the west coast, the piano met its sorry end when we had our own version of a beach party.  I can still see water pouring off of the top of the piano down onto the white ivories.

And some residences are home to “grand” and “baby grand” pianos.  These are magnificent works of art and can produce amazing sounds at the fingertips of masterful classical music types.

But in all cases, there comes a time that you have to relocate the damn piano and that’s where the fun starts.

It’s tough enough to decide what to do in good times with a piano but throw in an impending divorce and things can get dicey.

Take the couple who were going through the delicate task of dividing their assets.  Things were progressing until it came to valuing the magnificent upright grand that graced their elegant living room.  Having reached an impasse they agreed to auction it off and split the proceeds.

Four burly characters arrived on their doorstep on the appointed day and carefully transported the piano to the auction house.

A few weeks later a notice appeared in the local paper about a block of items coming up for auction.  The former owner of the piano, who happened to be interested in antiques, decided to go and check it out.  To his surprise, his very own piano was among the items on the block that day.  The bidding started and on this day it appeared that no one was interested in the piano so just for fun he threw in a stinker bid of $300.  “Going once, going twice.  Sold!”

He handed his ex $150 on the day she vacated the house for the last time; her share of the piano proceeds.

A few days later, four burly men from the auction house showed up at the same house from which they had removed the piano a few weeks earlier.  They seemed perplexed as they moved the piano back into the exact location from whence it had come a short time ago.

He sat and pondered the 52 white keys and 36 black.  He thought of playing Beethoven but instead chose the Everly Brothers as he hammered out the first notes of “Bye Bye Love.”

Advertisement