Falling pianos

[wtscherer]

Hi, everyone,

A few days ago Les Smith told about standing next to a grand piano whose
legs were evidently not attached with screws. The legs gave way and the
piano fell down.

I'm wondering if anyone else has an interesting story to tell about a piano
that fell. (Not in pitch.) Here's my story.

This happened in 1976, three years before I took up tuning. I was working
in a Baldwin dealership in Roanoke, Virginia. A delivery truck came to the
back alley and I and another guy (a new guy) were assigned to unload
several spinets and consoles. Each one was boxed. The tailgate of the truck
was about four feet off the ground. The procedure was to slide the box out
the back of the truck, get down behind the truck, tilt it downward, and
slowly let the box slide over the tailgate and down until one edge of the
box was resting on the pavement. Then we would swing the top end around,
set it on the ground, and hand truck the piano into the store for
unpacking, etc.

On the first piano, we had tilted it down on our shoulders and were slowly
letting more and more of its weight come down on us. About 1/3 the way down
the new guy decided this thing was getting too heavy and jumped out of the
way. I couldn't hold the whole weight, so it came crashing down on its
bottom edge, then tumbled over on its back with a loud "broinnnnng" as all
the hammers hit all the strings at once. We stood there startled, in
silence, just looking at each other. The manager came rushing out of the
store to see what had happened.

After a few unproductive words back and forth, we nervously trucked the
thing inside to unpack it and find what damage had been done. To our
amazement, we never found a single problem with it. (I never found out if
the eventual owner did or not.)

Wally Scherer