Gee after seeing Ed's topic about squares, I thought I'd post this letter from Grandma found in the piano bench.


Open letter from Grandma.

Dear Grandchildren,

Regarding that piano that was left to you in my will... Many of you will remember the beautiful ____________ (insert grand, square grand, upright or player). I’m sure you recall my saying that I would never get rid of it. That’s because (choose one)
1. It was here in the house when we bought it and your grandfather and I didn’t know that the legs could be taken off so that we could move it out of here.
2. Your grandfather, never loved the piano but was sure that if we made all our children take lessons, one of them would make it big in vaudeville and support us in our old age.
3. We bought it from an elderly piano salesman who told us that King George had one just like it and that there were only 3 made of this rare mahogany shipped exclusively from Cuba before communists used all of it for cigar boxes to help the Russians fund the Cuban missile thing.

Contrary to family lore, I was never really a concert pianist. This may come as a surprise to you but because none of you ever played the piano it was really easy to slop through a few old hymns and keep that old fable alive.

Your grandfather was really a cheapskate and never intended to tune it or even keep the mice out of it, so after he died I had old Mr. Smith completely rebuild it in exchange for a couple of really nice pies. He even vacuumed it out too! So remember it’s really worth a bunch of money and don’t let some fancy piano salesman tell you it’s not!

And don’t forget, if you have to move it, it will take at least 6 men who all used to be professional football players to lift it off the two concrete front steps.

Wow! I think I just tuned that piano last week, except that this one had obviously been "rebuilt" in exchange for one rather mediocre pie.