When my husband Will and I bought our first house in 1981, we inherited my mother's Lindsay piano which she had bought second-hand. I don't know the piano's age, but it could have been made over a century ago. In 1877, C.W. Lindsay, a blind piano tuner and repairer in Montreal, established a retail chain store selling phonographs, sheet music, and pianos that he restored and sold under his own name.
My mother used to say that pianos were one consumer good that maintained their value. I think she paid $1,000 for the piano and felt she could sell it for the same amount 10 or 20 years later. Today it's hard to give away an old upright piano. People want compact keyboard pianos with digital bells and whistles.
I took piano lessons when I was young but didn't keep it up and now can only play simple tunes. My children studied the piano when they were young and music rang through our Montreal home. In 1996, we moved to Calgary and brought the piano with us. For the next 29 years, it mainly served as living room furniture--the top was handy for displaying family photographs--although, my son's cat spent a few Christmas holidays at our home and enjoyed tickling the ivory keys.
Will and I have no immediate plans to downsize, but we knew that one day we wouldn't have space for our upright Lindsay. Friends started telling us about problems they had getting rid of their old pianos. One friend hired a company that advertised itself as piano movers who would take away your piano for a fee. Two burly men showed up at her house with saws and bludgeons. They hacked her piano into pieces, damaging her floor in the process. The butchery and noise were so painful that she went to another room. She called it a "piano murder." Another friend had to take her player piano to the city dump when she downsized to a smaller house.
These stories prompted Will and me to look for an appreciative buyer now to avoid being forced to kill our long-time companion later. We posted ads on Kijii and Facebook Marketplace: Free Vintage Piano, the "buyer" responsible for providing proper piano movers.
We got responses from many people interested in the piano. Actually, a friend told me that piano teachers advise students looking for pianos to check Facebook Marketplace, which lists many free or almost free pianos. Competition is strong, and our old piano had two strikes against it. One is that it hasn't been turned in over 30 years. Another is that my younger sibling stuck a large flower decal on the front that I didn't peel off for fear of damaging the finish. The decal isn't even centred.
Most people who contacted us either didn't follow up or said we lived too far from them in the city. One man came to see it with a couple of friends and a teenage girl who, I guessed, wanted to learn the piano. She pressed a couple of keys, but the group didn't take a closer look. We got the sense they realized the piano wasn't what they wanted the minute they saw it.
Another man offered to take the piano sight-unseen if we paid half the moving cost. He got snarky a few times during our message exchanges. When we turned down his 50% offer, he said, "You'll regret this one day." As the weeks went by with no bites, I might have regretted it had the man been nicer.
Perversely, every time I thought we might have a buyer, I hated the thought of letting my piano go. I'd sit down and play my simple songs, and it felt good to tickle the ivories and create music. Despite the lack of tuning, I could tell when I hit a wrong note, aside from an F key that needs real work.
One Friday, after three or four months of ad posts, a woman messaged that she'd like to see the piano the next day. She arrived with her husband and two children, a boy about age 13 and daughter about age 7. The husband said he'd moved here from Shanghai two years ago, and his wife and children had come this summer. His son had taken piano lessons for four years and his daughter was eager to learn. The boy sat down and ran his fingers the length of the keyboard and pressed the pedal. It sounded to me like he was playing a classical song, but he might have simply been trying all the keys.
The family talked briefly together in Chinese, looked inside at the mechanism, and asked if the piano had been repaired. It hadn't to my knowledge. They paid no attention to the flower decal. Then the father said that his son liked the piano, and they would take it.
Wow. Just like that.
They arranged for movers to come three days later. Both parents showed up with the two movers and a large van. The wife gave me a gift as thanks for the piano with a translated explanation on her phone:
This is a magnolia brooch
from the Forbidden City in China. The magnolia is the city flower of Shanghai,
symbolizing eternal elegance and charm. I give it to you as a gift and wish you
all the best.
One of the movers told us he was a computer programmer who did moving work part time. The two men tied straps around the piano, hoisted it onto a dolly, and wheeled the piano out to a ramp and into the van. All careful, smooth, and professional.
It was sad to see our piano leave, but Will and I are both happy that it went to a good home.
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| Our piano mover/computer programmer peers from behind the piano |
