callbacks

[Ron Nossaman]

"My A below middle C doesn't sound right. Could you come back and check it 
for me?"

Against ridiculous odds, this one was actually in the neighborhood instead 
of nine hundred miles away like they usually are. I had tuned for her a 
couple of times before, at five or six year intervals, so I wasn't 
expecting anything too terrible after only two days.

When I had gone to the house to tune it earlier in the week, she wasn't 
home, but left the door open and a note to go on in. The "piano" was nicely 
un-buried, and had been draggggged out into the middle of the room - 
necessitating the moving of half the living room furniture, which had also 
been done. Getting started, I found it was a reasonably even 30 cents or so 
low, even the bass. A string (straddling two unisons) was missing in the 
high treble, and I remembered that we had decided last time that discretion 
was the better part of cowardice and opted to leave it low. So I split the 
difference of pitch in various sections and tuned it to that. A Lester 
spinet. Awful thing. All wild strings and wretched noises. I left a bill 
with a note saying that since I wasn't sure why the piano was out from the 
wall, I'd left it there.

Two days later, responding to the call, I found the piano back in place and 
the living room furniture back snug in it's individual carpet craters. 
Checked the A. It fit right in with everything else. "It's flat", she said, 
humming to illustrate. "well, it's in tune with everything else", I said, 
"but I'll change it if you want". So I did. Pulled it up until she liked 
the sound of it, and took it down and back up until I found the spot that 
was good enough to suit her, and the least far off from everything else 
that I could get away with. Tuned the unison, and closed up. She sings, you 
see, and her ear is very sensitive to pitch deviations. Good. I'm glad I 
could make her happy and get the check. Another happy day in the trenches.

"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
                       -- Oscar Wilde --

Ron N