Sugar and Wine

Chapter 10

Picking up the phone, Justin dials the number on the torn corner of the yellow page he'd ripped out of the Union county telephone directory. Pacing back and forth, he sighs at each buzzing sound that blares in his right ear. After three rings, a gruff male voice answers, "Taylor Pianos. Can I help you?"

"Wow, I didn't expect anyone to answer the phone so late on a Saturday night."

"Well, sir. Our hours on Saturdays are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The rest of the week we're open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m."

"Oh, I see."

"Can I help you with something, sir?"

"Yes, well maybe. Let's see. I have this old player piano except it doesn't play anymore. At least, not by itself. I'm not sure how old it is, but I know it's been in the family for a long time. Do you ever repair anything like the piano I'm talking about?"

"Depends on the condition. I'd probably need to take a look at it to make a fair assessment. And, sometimes they're too far gone to repair. Wouldn't want you to haul it all the way in here and then I can't get it to work again."

"Well, it appears to be intact. I think it's probably okay. It can be played manually, but the insides – the guts – the things that made it play by itself are missing. It used to belong to my Grandmother and well to be perfectly frank I'm not sure what she did with the rest of it. I was just wondering if it could be fixed."

"About how old is the piano?"

"I don't know. At least sixty years or more. She had it when she was a little girl, and she was born in the 1920's."

"What happened to the insides -- did they fall apart or what? Are the pieces lying around in the bottom or are they completely gone?"

"It's just an empty hole more or less -- well the wheel is there that turned the music, but the music part is gone."

"You said your Grandmother was born in the 1920's?"

"Yes."

"You think she owned it when she was a young girl?"

"Yes."

"So that would put it around the 30's or 40's when the player piano's music went missing?"

"Yeah, probably in the 40's. My Mom was born then and she never mentioned the piano being able to play. I'm sure she would've remembered them having a player piano when she was little. She's a musician herself."

"Okay, well it's my guess that your Grandmother probably sold the music part."

"Sold it? How can you sell music from a player piano?"

"Well it could be taken from one and fitted into another one if you know how. Like I could get music for it now and as long as everything is in good enough shape to be fixed then it can play by itself again. It was right around the time of the war. It's my guess that she probably sold it for the money."

"How much money could she have gotten for something like that back then?"

"Ummm, I'm not too sure. My best guess would be around two hundred or maybe even three or four hundred dollars. At the time they quit making much, particularly luxury items like pianos. It was just after the Great Depression so there wasn't a lot of product or demand to go around, especially for things like player pianos. Your Grandmother must've been well off to even own one in the first place. It really doesn't make much sense to own such a thing as a player piano then to get rid of or sell off the very thing that makes it unique – makes it play."