I was recently retained to move two old antique pianos from our church building and relocate them to the local dump.  We had been trying to move them out for about two years, putting ads in the Star-Telegram and on Craig’s List.  Apparently, you just can’t give good junk away.  Anyway, I was recently approached by one of our deacons and he asked if I could enlist some help and move the two pianos.  One from the basement and the other from the second floor.  I have had experience moving pianos before, and although they are a pain, they usually are not insurmountable.

We arrived at the church and promptly went to the basement, thinking this piano would be the hardest, so we wanted to get it out of the way first.  I have moved pianos before with only one other person and while that is pretty taxing, it can be done.  My trusted helper Mark and his brother David grabbed one end and I picked up the other—just to get a feel of how heavy this lead-laden beast was going to be.  While we managed to get the thing off the floor, we couldn’t even take a step.  This was absolutely the heaviest thing I have ever been privileged to rupture a muscle over.

Even though we were all straining so hard that we were unable to speak, we managed to communicate with our eyes and agreed to drop the thing in unison.  Attempting to get a second, better grip and having our fourth helper Kirk join in resulted in nothing better than the first attempt.  I quickly processed the following:  We are supposed to take this thing to the dump.  The dump will have a large machine roll over the piano numerous times, reducing it to toothpicks and thus depriving us of the opportunity to utterly destroy the thing ourselves.

After about two hours, it occurred to me that mother had been wrong when she told me to be careful with our neighbor’s piano because I might break it.  This thing wasn’t gonna come apart with a mortar blast.  We unscrewed every screw and unbolted every bolt.  And yet this thing was still in one solid piece.  It was like magic.  It was like they had used some sort of industrial strength glue or something.

With everything unscrewed or unbolted, we then grabbed a ten-pound sledge hammer and begin to give it “the ol’ college try!” One hard swing and then another.  We barely scratched this hundred year piano.  I was beginning to think that it was actually a recycled World War I bunker.  But finally, the large, flat board on one side of the piano flew off with amazing force.  Then the rest of the piano fell over backwards and nearly killed Kirk.

It’s amazing how loud a piano is when every string is struck at the same time.

In any event, we finished disassembling the piano and carried it up the stairs in manageable pieces.  The string board by itself was actually heavier than most pianos I have moved.  We got the thing loaded on the trailer and called it a day.

The following day, we reluctantly returned to grab the second piano.  We stared down the menacing beast for a few moments and then I gave the command to lift.  Surprisingly, it came loose from the floor with a modicum of ease.  It was still very heavy, but after our battle the day before, we felt buoyed to victory.  We felt like we could do this.

We quickly moved a couple of items and marched the doomed piano out of the cell that had held it until this moment.  This was going to be easy.  Then we arrived at the door.  Just outside the door was a stairway that ran along the outside of the building.  We had measured it and to our surprise, it was plenty wide for the piano.  Not for us, but for the piano.

After some mild trouble making the corner, we decided to launch the piano down the stairs and pick it up at the bottom.  It didn’t launch.  At best, we could, with great effort, hanging from the outside part of the stairwell, get this thing to roll and tumble uncontrollably down one, sometimes two steps before one of us would lose our grip and fall off the side of the stair well.

Amazingly, the piano was still in one piece—aside from a couple of removable parts that we had removed.  Finally, at the bottom of the stairs, this thing seemed to have gained weight.  We could no longer easily pick it up.  We were exhausted and Kirk kept whining about one of his feet that was pointing in the wrong direction.  In spite of all this, we finally got it into the trailer and loaded up.

After driving about a half mile through a backwoods residential area that is truly off the beaten path, I navigated a corner and pulled over so we could reload the piano.  Picking it up out of the ditch proved to be a bit of challenge since there was nothing level to balance the piano on.  After some wrestling, we managed to get the piano back into the trailer.  I noticed that the base of the piano or the floor of the trailer (I couldn’t tell which) seemed to be a bit wobbly.  I thought about tying it down this time, but all I had with me was my good rope and I didn’t want to hurt it.

I took off slowly and crept my way down the street trying to ignore the faces in the windows of the homes we passed.  After driving about a half a block, the piano committed suicide.  I realized at that moment that this piano was not put together like the first one.  It completely shattered the second time it hit the pavement.  It was a sad end to a condemned life.  Its last several years had been in spent in storage.  And now, it lay in assorted pieces strewn along the roadway between two houses.  In unison, we all jumped into the air, giving a fist pump and a primal scream of approval.  Well, everyone except Kirk who was still whining about feigned injuries sustained back at the stairwell.

After picking up the pieces . . . . and Kirk, we retired to my house for lunch and a rousing game of Halo.  After a bit of debriefing, we decided to add a line to our services—Piano moving!  But so far, no one has called.