He took piano lessons as a child. Through no virtue of his own, he kept them up through puberty. He could slog his way through Scott Joplin's The Chrysanthemum and most of The Entertainer. The Easy Winners was his favourite, but the second and third chunks were a bit difficult. He practiced on a very old piano, possibly a German-made Steinman upright. It was in bad shape. There was a massive fissure running up the wood of the bass harp. Any note below G in the bass clef caused a thundering rumble of distortion. A neat effect, but not one with which to teach a young ear music. That same G, the first one flat of middle C, was forever becoming stuck. The key itself was fine, but the mechanism that returned the hammer from the string after the key was played was broken. Imagine a hot-blooded teenaged male losing his proverbial shit trying to get that note to sound. He knew what the chord was supposed to sound like, at least, the untuned noise he was used to, but the blasted G was missing!
This would have been an excellent time for some parental guidance: an excellent teaching opportunity. But no, his parents were too busy for music. As his frustration grew, if he was not able on that particular day to see beyond the great injustice of mere nuisance, grow too would the frustration of his father. Frustration causing frustration leading to frustration. Pa needed to come through with a better solution. But he never quite came round to seeing this. Tuning the old beast would have cost a small fortune by their standards. Maybe if father and son had taken it upon themselves to attempt a more cool-headed approach, actually diagnosing the problem and maybe even playing with the mechanics of the machine, there could have been more music and less anger.
Very evocative.
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