In 1955, an organ technician here in San Antonio called me and asked
if I would accompany him to Immaculate Heart of Mary Church just south
of downtown San Antonio.  He promised that it would be "interesting".

When he arrived in the choir loft, there sitting on top of the Kilgen
Organ console was a player unit.  He had been instructed by the pastor
to remove the player as it no longer functioned.  During the course of
the removal, not a difficult task as the player just sat on top of the
console, the pastor of the church arrived to watch.

"Would you like the rolls that go with it?", he asked.

The rolls were no longer stored in the church and we went into the
monastery part of the building.  He opened a closet and there were over
one hundred rolls stacked neatly on shelves.  The labels were like none
I had ever seen before.   Printed at the top of each label was the word
"Leabarjan", and the titles were all written in ink, in flowing script.

"What you see here is the work of Father Bernard Mayer, a priest
stationed here in the 1920's.  He made these rolls."

Most were of a religious nature, some for the Roman Catholic liturgy.
Many, however, were classical selections.  I loaded the rolls in the
car.  Closer examination revealed that the priest had signed and dated
all of the rolls.  Through the years I played them all...on a
piano...which did nothing for all those extended perforations.  One
thing struck me...I never saw one correction to the perforating in the
whole lot.

When I learned what a Leabarjan perforator was, I went back to the
church in search of it.  I was informed that Father Mayer had taken the
"machinery" with him when he had been transferred to Arizona.  I
tracked that "machinery" all the way to the church in Phoenix without
any luck.  I have almost all of those rolls, and still marvel at the
time and patience it must have taken to make them.

I eventually ended up with the Kilgen player, which was nothing more
than an 88-note tracker bar connected to a set of contacts.  It would
play any 88-note roll.  There was never any provision made for control
perforations of any kind.  You even had to put it into reroll manually.
Kilgen did make what they called a "Dual Control Player" but that will
be the subject of another post.

Ed Gaida