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The piano technician, treasure finder
On a PTG discussion list, a lighthearted conversation recounts objects discovered by piano tuners inside the instruments they were about to tune.
Treasures and surprises abound.
Firstly, there’s a real diamond found by David Lawson. Recognizing the gem that adorned her engagement ring, the customer couldn’t help but shed a tear. People are often delighted to rediscover jewelry, even when it’s of lesser value!
A butcher knife was found in a piano in a San Francisco church, and tuner John Ashcraft starts to imagine it as the weapon of a crime, hidden there by an unknown murderer.
Another tuner, Alan Eder, finds the pieces of a whole puzzle behind the keyboard cover. The little boy pretends to be surprised: “Ah! So that’s where it went!”
Other lost items mentioned in this thread: a Saint Anthony medal (the saint invoked for finding lost items), “risqué” magazines, a shriveled hot dog, car keys, dead mice in their nest, a dead bird, investment certificates, coins, CDs, and more.
Nicolas and I regularly find pencils or paper clips at our clients’ places. But here’s what I once discovered in a small Willis grand piano: 23 pencils (I took the time to count them!), 2 erasers, 2 paper clips, the metronome pendulum weight, the small lever to wind it up, an Astro-Boy figurine, a 6-inch plastic ruler, stickers, a dozen pieces of paper, a felt-tip pen cap. A form of “prepared piano” that would have made John Cage proud!
A poignant moment experienced by a piano tuner:
One day, our colleague David from Ottawa removes an envelope containing thousands of dollars from a piano. This was the family fortune hidden there by the client’s father. After his premature death, the family lived in poverty as the paternal inheritance had never been found. It’s easy to understand why the customer was beside herself!