Nightmare
Many years ago, when I was just a young lady, and hadn’t married Zac yet, I realized I had a love for collecting old pianos. I would go to garage sales, and I would be the one who found a $25 fire damaged piano to buy. Then I would offer local transients beer to help me move it, and I would install it in one of my friends living rooms. That was me. And as I lived in all these different places I continued my habit of collecting things I couldn’t even house.
That was then, this is now. Now I still collect instruments, and thankfully, am regarded as enough of a musician that people often give me things they have that they don’t know what to do with. I feel like a house mom at a half-way house for damaged instruments. I have long had the notion that one day I would become a piano tuner. After a little more research, I realize that it would take some major persistence to achieve that goal, but I can still be dangerous with a tuning hammer. When I moved to Hot Springs and I was pregnant with my daughter, Eureka, we had spotted this old building that looked a bit like a museum inside. It was called “Davis Piano Repairs” and from peeking in the windows, I knew this guy would be someone to meet. We called him up, and I nervously pretended I was interested in buying a piano, and could he meet us down at his shop. He agreed, and so it was. I really had to look in that building. What I didn’t know was that Mr. Davis was an eccentric guy who was happy to talk about his treasures with anyone, and the tour that I got that day was going to be a tour I would have to endure many more times. (and even more in the future, as he comes by occasionally and still gives us the tour!!!!!) I gathered my nerve to ask him if he had ever considered taking on an apprentice, and he grumpily snapped, “NO! I don’t have time for that!!!”. That was the end of that idea.
Another kid and several years later, I put together that our good friend Chuck Dodson’s dad is the other piano tuner in town. Since I know Chuck, I thought his dad would be a shoe-in for my apprentice fantasy. I called him one day, and he talked to me for 45 minutes, and what I learned from him was this: Piano Tuners are loners. He didn’t want company, he didn’t want to have to explain to his clients what I was doing there, and he didn’t want to have to talk about everything. If one wants to become a piano tuner, you can just do the correspondence course like he did 40 years ago. Even then it takes years before you are proficient enough to move with confidence in the piano tuning world. But after all that, he still agreed that since he was tuning Chuck’s piano, and we were Chuck’s friends, that I could sit there and watch. Deal. It took about three hours to tune that piano, and it was fascinating to watch. No electric tuners, just tuning forks, hammers, and felt. He does it all by ear, and it has nothing to do with musical ability, but rather the science of matching up the sound waves. It was truly humbling, and fascinating! When he was wrapping things up, he mentioned to me that Joe Davis was thinking about selling his piano shop. That made the blood drain from my face. I asked casually, do you know how much he is selling it for? Mr. Dodson says, he wants to sell it as is, with all the contents. And the price was low. Like 1959 low. I knew Zac was waiting for me out in the car, so I wrapped things up and went out there to tell Zac the good news. Could we hurry home fast enough to call Mr. Davis to secure an offer? Zac was not nearly as excited as I was, he took it more as an interesting piece of local gossip. I could hardly sleep that weekend. We did not call Mr. Davis right away, and all weekend long I was imaging someone hearing the news and beating me to it.
This is what I knew. The floors were weak, and in some places completely caved in. It was three shot gun shops with exterior brick walls. It has an outside courtyard with a 15 foot concrete retaining wall. On the top yard is a beautiful old pecan tree. No central heat and air. The water is draining to an unknown source. The electrical is marginal, maybe some is salveagable. The roof leaks. It has had a fire in the third bay, and you can see the damage to the tin-tile ceiling. It is full of pianos, all taken apart for some reason or another, there is a complete pipe organ in there that was built in Arkansas. There is an 1859 Chickering square grand. There is a broken cast iron cream separator. It is FULL of random “treasures”. Either all junk, or the most brilliant collection of musical oddities and antiquities ever to be unearthed. Either way, I felt I was destined to be the curator of these treasures, and so I am.
The next two months were a high pressure combination of paperwork, meeting people, being denied, being insulted, freaking people out, tapping all financial resources, and finally connecting to the right people who thought this wasn’t such a bad idea. To just name a few great people, Shelly Loe of Southern Bankcorp down in Arkadelphia was the one who got us a business loan. Under the auspices of downtown development, and historic renovations she was to convince someone that we were serious. She was great. And Beau Bishop of Alliance Insurance wrote us an insurance policy, which was basic, but a lot of people didn’t want to touch this project. We went to several banks, and a few came down and did a walk through, and said, NO WAY. We are not financing this disaster. It was two months of ups and downs. BUT the day did come. April of 2007 we signed the papers, and got the keys.
Now what? I said. With two small children, we weren’t exactly ready to tuck into a major construction project that would unearth untold toxicity, so instead we joined the circus and pretended none of this was happening. Buyers remorse, we have it bad. One day it seems like the most brilliant thing we’ve ever though of, and on another day so heavy. So much bigger than us.
Since we bought the building, I have given some obvious broken things away, taken a million more odd instruments into the shop, (Zac says we are the rare people who actually have made that building junkier) we have put a new roof on the building, to at least stop the damage from worsening, and have had about 3000 conversations on what we should do. What are we doing? The first step is to continue to consolidate the treasures, and now, to find the people that care about these things. In November we hope to go in and finish emptying out the largest of the three shops, gut it, and get a floor in there. Then we can set up a production shop for ourselves, and plan out the other two shops.
And that is why I have created this blog, to have a place to tell about our experiences down there, to post pictures of our progress, and so you can have a place to follow along. This is just too strange of an experience not to tell. Thank you, Joe Davis. I think.