Son Steve writes...
In most families moving furniture is not considered hazardous, I said MOST families, not our family.
It all started one fine Saturday morning in central Kansas. The sun was out, the temperature was 75 and the south wind had not yet awoken from it’s nightly nap to rage at the day at 50 mph. It was on this typical July morning that I picked up the moving truck from my local truck rental agency in Salina. Knowing that the heaviest piano ever constructed was waiting for me in Hays (about 100 miles away), I was facing the drive with trepidation.
The drive was uneventful, as most drives across the western Kansas are, buffalo roamed, deer played, (that whole antelope thing is a bunch of crap!) and skies were not cloudy all day, only for a few hours in the afternoon when a storm blew in and got all the stuff that was still in the back of pickup trucks all wet. I wish I could say that discouraging words were seldom heard, but well, we were moving a piano after all.
Arriving at my new bride’s old house in Hays I suddenly got a chill and a sense of foreboding. Then I saw it, her grandmother’s piano, a beautiful mahogany full size upright piano with a cast iron soundboard. How bad can it be I thought to myself, I have moved pianos before, it isn’t a big deal. I was wrong.
Moving the piano out of the old house was a breeze. Backed the truck up in the front yard, extended the walkway plank out of the back of the truck right to the door jam of the house. Me on one side and two of my friends on the other, we were 25 and bullet proof, what could an old piano do to harm us?!? We got the piano into the back of the box truck, loaded Laura’s remaining possessions and waved goodbye to Hays, Kansas.
After another exhilarating drive across the grassy plains of western Kansas, described by early explores alternately as “The Great American Desert” and “A Rolling Mass of Nothing”, the piano and I arrived back at our new home in Salina. Awaiting us was my father and mother, my new stepson, several friends and a few curious onlookers who had heard the legend of grandma’s piano.
Almost immediately the trouble began, the new house had two 40” maple trees in the front yard, one of which was parked directly in front of the front door, so backing the box truck up to the front door, as we had done at the old house, was out of the question. We could have cut down the tree I suppose, and the engineer in me thought this was the most logical solution to the problem, how long could it take to grow a new one? But my new bride was instant that she knew more about trees than I do so the tree remained.
Without backing the truck up to the door the walkway was useless, well not entirely it did get in the way later causing the nearly fatal mishap that was to happen later.
\In a matter of a few minutes all the items were removed from the back of the truck, everything that is except the piano. How do you get a 1000 lb piano out of the back of a truck that is 4 feet off the ground? With a ramp of course! The walkway plank extended to the ground making a ramp just wide enough for the piano. We lifted it off the back of the truck onto the ramp and slowly slid it down to the ground. In fact it worked so well that someone suggested that we prop it up the front stairs of the house to ramp into the house in a similar manor.
With the ramp in place there was only enough room for one person in the doorway of the house, did I mention I was 25 and bullet proof?, so I got a good grip the old girl, lifted her up and got ready to move her into the house. About that time I felt what can only be described as a strange sensation on the side of my head followed by a sudden narrowing of my field of vision, my foot slipped off the door lintel onto the ramp turning my ankle as it slid off the ramp onto the concrete step. While all of this was happening I heard my new stepson say “mom, Steve’s head was stuck in the door”. What?!?, that would explain the pain, near loss of consciousness and falling off the lintel/ramp/step. How could this have happened? Well the explanation was really very simple, my father and the other 50 people gathered around had decided to push on the piano at the exact instant that I lifted the other end. Normally this would have worked perfectly by the sudden movement knocked me off balance, pinning my head between the corner of the piano and the door frame. Unfortunately the freight train that is my father and all who were assisting him on this particular day could not stop suddenly and continued to push their end of the piano oblivious to my condition.
Fortunately I inherited a hard head from one of my parents (you can determine for yourself which one) and no permanent damage was done to me, the piano or the door frame and after two or three more futile attempts at getting the piano through the doorway the mission was finally accomplished with no further injuries.
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