My fascination with mechanical Instruments began at a very young age,
even as far back as before memory takes me, or at least my parents
would have me believe.  Before my family moved to this part of
Pennsylvania in 1988 we lived in northern Indiana, where my mother
tells me there was a "Pipe Organ Pizza" restaurant in Mishawaka.
The organ was automated and contained a number of playing instruments
worked into the facade.  She says that at the age of two I was
enthralled and couldn't be torn away even at the prospect of food.

I can clearly remember the many summer trips spent at Knoebels, standing
either front or back of the glorious Frati organ at the Grand carousel
and blowing my ears out at the Wurlitzer 165 conversion near the
Phoenix.  There was also the Player merchant at the Bloomsburg Fair
(whose name escapes me), who every year I would come by and ask to hear
his roll of Liberace's Gershwin medley (which, unbeknownst to me,
seemed to grate on his nerves year after year.  But that's another
story).  There were also the many hours I'd spend at home swapping out
discs on my mother's Thorens Gramophone.

My first (and so far only) player piano was gifted to me by my parents
on my 16th birthday.  It was a mouse-ridden Cunningham upright with as
basic a Standard action as you could ask.  I set to work in my makeshift
porch shop taking it apart and cleaning out the abundance of sunflower
shells the mice had packed under the keys (as well as the long-deceased
mouse itself).

Amazingly, the cloth was nearly untouched by the mice save for a large
hole in the governor, and was still rather pliable.  A duct tape patch
on the hole got the action playing again; that is, until the governor
imploded.  Since then the piano has quietly lived next to our Kranich &
Bach (another charity case), awaiting the day I work up enough time and
money to get it playing again.

Ben Willis