The Piano, a Homecoming

 

We moved the piano back home this week.  I say, “we”, although my main contribution was to worry, watch and take pictures of the proceeding.  I’ve been back in my childhood home for about 2 years now, and we’ve been talking about moving the piano ever since.  If you have ever moved a century old upright piano, you will understand why it has taken so long to do more than talk about it.  It is not something to take lightly.  But my friend David, the most expert piano mover in the country, agreed with me that the time had come.  My friend Clay was put in charge of gathering a crew of strong men, and Thursday was chosen as the day.

This is not just any old piano.  It belonged to my great-grandmother and my first memory of it was in her house on West End Avenue.  I can barely remember her playing it, but I do remember where it sat in her living room.  The piano came to our house after she died and stayed there until Robert and I built our house just up the hill from where I grew up.  I have no recollection of how it got moved to our house, or who moved it.  Robert probably planned it that way. 

I was afraid that I would have a tragedy to write, of a piano crushing a hapless volunteer or rolling down the hill into a gully on the way over.  But with David in charge, things could not have gone smoother and, in no time, it rolled off the trailer, across the porch, into the living room to the spot that 

If this piano could talk, what tales it could tell! It might first tell of its journey to Centerville, a few years before 1900 when my great grandfather, Tom Colley, built a beautiful home for his young bride, Fannie Tate, on a hill overlooking the Duck River.  Tom was 17 years older than his wife – he had to wait several years for her to grow up before he could formally court her.  She attended Dr. Price’s College for Young Ladies in Nashville, where she majored in piano, organ and voice.  Soon after she arrived in Centerville, she became the pianist for the Methodist Church and continued as long as her health allowed.

A succession of little girls joined the family, and each of them took piano lessons, practicing on this piano.  As their competence grew, they were asked to play for “company,” and played for their friends and at family gatherings.  They practiced for recitals on these very keys, and when a little blonde-haired girl unexpectedly arrived, seven years after my grandmother, who the couple thought was their last child, she too learned to play on this piano.  Ophelia Colley  was first taught to play by her older sisters, standing on tiptoe in front of the keyboard, picking out songs and singing at the top of her lungs.  It was at this piano that the seed of Minnie Pearl was planted, the need to perform that became her life’s work.  It was at this piano that she played for her mother’s friends, even when she pretended to be shy and say that she couldn’t play that well.  Her mother would say, “Don’t say you can’t play; go over there and show them that you can’t play!”

The girls remembered their mother playing the piano in the evenings for her husband, romantic tunes that he loved.  As my grandmother, Dixie, grew into her teens, she became a piano player for a local combo, a group that went by the unlikely name of Hard Tater and the Syncopaters.  This piano was where she learned the tunes that were popular dance numbers of the early 1920’s.  Her love for those old songs continued and were some of the first songs I remember her playing as I was growing up.  A young farmer from just west of town heard her play that piano at high school parties and fell in love, marrying her and raising two boys who also loved her music.

The piano was an imposing presence in the small house where my great grandmother lived by the time I came along.  It was the focal point of the living room, the first thing you saw from the entry door.  I was allowed to pick out songs on the keys when I visited, and when I started taking lessons, I was encouraged to show my MawMaw what I was learning.  I remember taking the sheet music to White Christmas out of the piano bench one day and stumbling my way through the melody and occasional chords.  My grandmother thought it was wonderful; I’m sure MawMaw was reminded of her statement to her daughters long ago about showing people you couldn’t play!

When Fannie Tate Colley died, the piano came to live in our farmhouse.  Some of my happiest memories are of my grandmother and me playing and singing.  I remember learning Mr. Sandman and Last Date and Sentimental Journey and all the old classics, and I remember friends coming by to practice singing with my grandmother’s accompaniment for various community events.  One in particular, Steve Turner, was a regular until he learned to play the guitar and accompany himself.  He still talks about those times; his eyes light up when her name comes up in conversation.

When I married and we built a house just across the way, the piano came to live at my house.  My playing skills were never anywhere near those of my great grandmother or grandmother, but I enjoyed plunking away on it.  When we had parties, my more talented friends would play and we would gather around and sing.  I, who eventually took my grandmother’s place as pianist for our little country church, practiced the week’s hymns on that piano and I’m sure the story it would tell about that would have been a sad tale, when compared to that of the past.  The playing by ear gene passed me by altogether and I did well to stumble along with both eyes focused on the printed notes in front of me.

So now, I have moved back to my childhood home and the piano has settled in again, in the same spot it occupied for all those years.  I pulled out some old music today and played a little bit of White Christmas.  I would like to say that the stuck keys and long past-due tuning were responsible for how it sounded, but I’m afraid I don’t play any better than that long-ago little girl who played from that same worn sheet music.  But, it’s a fine thing to just look at that old piano and run my fingers over the keys again.  I didn’t realize how much the living room needed it to be complete.