THE OLD UPRIGHT

 …tickling the eighty-eights? The tradition continues…

 

In about 1944 at age 22, Mom ran away from home which had been Houston, Texas. She planted herself in Glendale or Pasadena. Her first purchase of any consequence was a brand new Knabe ‘upright grand’ piano. “They’re the best made!” Mom said, and although the Steinway folks might disagree with her on this particular proclamation, Mom was never wrong.  So, I believed her. 

         Mom’s Knabe was hauled from pillar to post in Southern California, and ultimately to Chico where Brother Beebo and I would practice scales and etudes on it. Well, Beebo did. As a little kid, there weren’t too many hills I was willing to die on, but not practicing the piano would be one of ‘em. Mrs. Scotchler, first and later Mrs. Chamberlain both ultimately threw up their hands and told Mom not to bother bringing me back for lessons.

         Mom’s old upright probably weighed a ton and a half. Its walnut finish was nearly black and the keys were capped with real ivory. Although I wouldn’t actually play the thing, I did like opening the front and watching the hammers hit the taut harp wires inside as I ran my fingers up and down the keyboard. This was especially fun when I’d prop open the front and then put Susie, our Siamese cat, on the ivories and watch her rocket across them, leap to the floor and tear out of the room to hide in a closet somewhere.

I never really learned to play the piano. My stubbornness and stupidity won out (as it often does to this day). But I could pick out a tune by ear using my right hand for the melody while pounding chords with the left. That only works if I stuck with the key of C. No black keys necessary.

As Time Went By (apologies here to Dooley Wilson), I grew up, left the house, got married, got divorced and never had a piano. Occasionally, I’d stop by Mom and Dad’s and sometimes I’d sit down at the keys and plink something out. I’d turn and find Mom leaning in the doorsill and when she knew I saw her she’d say, “Don’t you wished you’d have practiced for old Doris Scotchler?”

 

Shortly after that divorce, and still wincing from it, I found myself at a dinner hosted by a local California Teachers’ Association chapter. Tables lined the so-called ballroom at the Holiday Inn and I sat in a folding chair next to and opposite other teachers, none of whom I knew.  

Across the table was, as I recall, a rather attractive woman, about my age, who opened the conversation with: “If you’re not really careful, I bet we’ll be playing footsie before this event is over.”

I was aghast. For two reasons. One: having married way too young, I never engaged in whatever footsie was. Two: fresh off failure, I was certain one thing leading to another would only leave the woman thinking “What’s up with this guy?” This presupposes that I had any idea of what ‘one thing leading to another’ even meant.  

I drew my size 14s under my chair and hoped whatever they were going to serve us would limit the need for small talk. But small talk ensued and as we chatted, I discovered she was ‘between relationships’ and that she was housing an upright piano that her former mate or boyfriend had rescued from the First Baptist Church on Salem Street just before they tore the building down. “I don’t play the damned thing. It’s huge and all it’s doing is collecting dust,” she reported.  

The old First Baptist Church housed the very Sunday School from which Beebo and I played hooky in our youth, so I said: “Would you take hundred bucks for it?”

 

Brother Beebo was a freelancer. He owned a trencher for digging foundation footings, chopped wood like Honest Abe and, best of all, moved pianos. And now I had a job for him.

         The house I bought after the divorce was on East Eighth Street, the inbound lanes to Chico of State Route 32. Footsie Woman, it turns out, lived on a cross street a couple of blocks away. Beebo, judging the effort necessary to load the old upright into his pickup for a two hundred yard transport had a better, more practical idea. Carefully lifting the treble end of the behemoth, he slipped his piano dolly under the middle and gently set it on the floor. Using two planks, he nursed the thing from her porch, across the walk and onto Alder Street. Finding the crest, he turned the unit and headed north toward 8^th. When traffic was clear, he bulled the assemblage into the middle of the State Route, pivoted it, and pushed it the block-and-a-half down the highway to my address. Passing traffic slowed as many had likely never seen an old upright piano being manpowered in the middle lane of a major through-way before.

         Within about twenty minutes the old piano was resting in the new-to-me living room at 788 E 8^th. Beebo hustled back to pick up his pickup. Meanwhile, I plinked out a tune with my right hand a feebly created chords with my left.  Shortly, Beebo arrived, cracked open one of my PBRs and said, “Don’t you wish you’da practiced when you were a kid?”

In the forty-plus years I’ve owned the piano, it, too, has moved from pillar to post: Chico to Soulsbyville; Soulsbyville to Sonora; Sonora to Roseville, then Rocklin then here. Early on, in an effort to strip and refinish it, I disassembled the cabinet finding remnants of color crayons, raffle tickets, and a tattered picture of the baby Jesus with some lambs opposite the words to “Jesus Loves Me” which I learned myself to play.

         Now, the old Baptist upright resides in my studio about five feet from my elbow as I type this.

 

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and after decorating the Christmas Tree, grandson Hudson – about 13 – pulled up a chair and began more than plinking on my piano. Apparently, he’d captured some music from contemporary movies or TV programs – tunes and melodies and musical literature I hadn’t heard before. His right hand and his left hand played beautifully in concert with one another from what I could tell. 

But then he launched into “Carol of the Bells.” I swiveled in my chair and watched him command the instrument until my eyes clouded with tears. That damned old thing had never sounded so good and I thought to myself:

         Don’t you wish you’da practiced when you were a kid?

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Church of the Open Road Press