[ Ref. piano smashing in Laurel & Hardy film "The Music Box" ]

I was studying music at college in 1969 and found out that a piano was
about to become splinters to pass through a one-foot diameter hole.  To
my dismay I found out that it was an old Emerson Angelus.  I remembered
practicing on it two years earlier and saw the glass window but the
player stack was gone.

I had opened the fallboard and discovered that the stack and bellows
was all crammed below the keyboard and that there was only a spool box
and wind motor above the keys and saw the cut off lead tubing swirling
up on either side of the key bed.

Living in a dorm room definitely rules out keeping it there but
persuaded the resident hall director to let me keep it in a storeroom
in the basement until I rented a trailer and an unhappy dad gave up
garage space for its new temporary lodging.

We certainly got a lot of strange looks when a bunch of us pushed it
down the street to the dorm -- many thought it was probably a bunch of
college drunk buddies stealing an old piano.  At least it ended up
whole instead of through a hole.

Gregory Filardo