I helped "lose" a piano once. It was during the homecoming parade my senior year in high school. It was tradition at my school that each class built a float for the parade. The girls in my class has some grand plans and designed a really complex float. Being seniors, we procrastinated, and about two days before the parade, it became obvious that the float would not be completed. So we finished stuffing napkins in the chicken wire around the bottom of the flatbed trailer. We tore off all the other construction. Then we got together some football uniforms for the guys to wear. Got some old band equipment for us to hold. Stuck up a hand lettered sign that said, "The unfinished symphony." For good measure, one of the guys found an old piano which had been stored in a grainary on his parent's farm. It was a monster upright piano. Took five or six of us to hoist it on the trailer. (Did we tie it down? Of course not. I suppose you can no see where this is going.)
Anyway, we got through the entire parade. Got a few laughs from the crowd. (Did I mention that the entire second grade class was marching about 20 feet behind our float?) On the way back to the school, the guy driving the pickup pulling the float got a little crazy with the gas pedal, and the piano was launched off the back of the float. It landed on its back on the ground, about 10 feet in front of the second grade class. (No second graders were injured in the making of this story.) The immense sound of all the strings vibrating in unison was pretty impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the 200 or so mice that started squeaking and came scampering out of the piano after it landed. (Remember it had been stored in a grainery.) I guess the mice thought the piano made a nice house, but not being music lovers decided to vacate their home when all the noise started. Of course, the screams of all the second grade girls (and a few of the boys, if truth be told) added to the wonderful harmony. Vibrating piano, screaming children, squeaking mice, laughing seniors, what a complex sound.
The mice scattered to the four corners of town. A guy who had a large machine shed about half a block from where this all happened complained all winter about how many mouses were in his shed, wondering where they had all come from. Nobody ever told him the whole story.
3 comments:
I saw that story and delighted myself in imagining woodland creatures having a wonderful concert
I helped "lose" a piano once. It was during the homecoming parade my senior year in high school. It was tradition at my school that each class built a float for the parade. The girls in my class has some grand plans and designed a really complex float. Being seniors, we procrastinated, and about two days before the parade, it became obvious that the float would not be completed. So we finished stuffing napkins in the chicken wire around the bottom of the flatbed trailer. We tore off all the other construction. Then we got together some football uniforms for the guys to wear. Got some old band equipment for us to hold. Stuck up a hand lettered sign that said, "The unfinished symphony." For good measure, one of the guys found an old piano which had been stored in a grainary on his parent's farm. It was a monster upright piano. Took five or six of us to hoist it on the trailer. (Did we tie it down? Of course not. I suppose you can no see where this is going.)
Anyway, we got through the entire parade. Got a few laughs from the crowd. (Did I mention that the entire second grade class was marching about 20 feet behind our float?) On the way back to the school, the guy driving the pickup pulling the float got a little crazy with the gas pedal, and the piano was launched off the back of the float. It landed on its back on the ground, about 10 feet in front of the second grade class. (No second graders were injured in the making of this story.) The immense sound of all the strings vibrating in unison was pretty impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the 200 or so mice that started squeaking and came scampering out of the piano after it landed. (Remember it had been stored in a grainery.) I guess the mice thought the piano made a nice house, but not being music lovers decided to vacate their home when all the noise started. Of course, the screams of all the second grade girls (and a few of the boys, if truth be told) added to the wonderful harmony. Vibrating piano, screaming children, squeaking mice, laughing seniors, what a complex sound.
The mice scattered to the four corners of town. A guy who had a large machine shed about half a block from where this all happened complained all winter about how many mouses were in his shed, wondering where they had all come from. Nobody ever told him the whole story.
LOL! I love Don's story!
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