There are professional movers in my house. They are carrying my whole life through the front door in the form of furniture and boxes. And the memories are getting so thick you have to swat them like mosquitoes.
“Where’s this go, boss?” one of the movers asks.
He looks about 18 or 19. He is a walking tattoo exhibit. He is rolling a piano across the house. My piano.
You don’t know how special this instrument is to me. My mother bought me this upright when I was a young man. She had no money, she lived in a trailer, and yet she dug deep to buy me a Yamaha U1 because her baby boy wanted to be a pianist.
The first song I played on this piano was “Danny Boy,” in honor of my late father.
Over the years, I have played “Danny Boy” in beer joints, mildewed taverns, inside foggy VFW bars, and at Catholic funerals.
I have been playing piano in earnest since my 9th birthday. I’ve played at
civic meetings, school plays, Rotary Club fundraisers, hotel lobbies, tiki bars, and honky tonks.
Playing piano is also how I met my wife—sorta. I got a job working as a part-time pianist for our Baptist church.
Each Wednesday, this Baptist young woman would sit on the front row near the Mason & Hamlin to watch me accompany choir practice. She asked me to play a tune for her one evening after practice was over. I played “Danny Boy.”
My attention is diverted from the piano when I see another mover carrying a large cardboard box containing office supplies.
Inside this box is my Letera 32 manual typewriter. Sea foam green. The typewriter of my childhood, my adolescence, and my adult years.
Back in the days before computers were mainstream, there were only two things a writer was required to own. A copy of “The Elements of Style” by…