The Lives of a Forgotten Piano

The Lives of A Forgotten Piano

East Cary Street in Richmond, Virginia, is known for its historical cobblestone lanes, its many abandoned warehouses aching for someone to breathe life into them, and the train trestles suspended above the street in a chaotic snake-like dance. As the trains go by, they cause the warehouses to shudder and quake. The 'warehouse district' composes a half-mile strip near the end of Cary Street and there stands these relics and only the sights of dilapidation.
         It was an early Saturday morning when I drove to this section of town in a sleep-deprived fog from the previous day of work and I am barely aware of my surroundings that have become so familiar to me. I pull up in front of the old, derelict, four-story brick warehouse, with its ominous paint-flecked iron shutters that have cracked, peeled, and rusted from decades of decay and neglect. I stepped out of my car and gazed around. The feeling of complete isolation felt eerily unsettling, as there was not a single soul to be seen anywhere. No cars, no buses, no-----people. I'll be completely alone this morning simply striving to finish up my project for the Virginia Holocaust Museum where I volunteer as a writer and researcher for the archives. As I put my key into the red-scratched door of the museum a train passes by on the elevated tracks across the street. Right on time. There's that rumbling and shaking going throughout my body! Or is that pure, ice-cold fear? I shivered with cold on that hot September day.
         The vast majority of my waking hours have been spent inside this dusty haunt that is being restored to house the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Recently, my Director at the museum, thought it would be a GRAND idea to bestow upon me the project of refinishing a vintage piano that was salvaged from a nearby synagogue because he trusted that I would put my heart and soul into making sure it was finished on time for the fundraising drive we were to be having on September 11th. I couldn't say no. Once I saw the piano, I was undeniably overwhelmed by this monstrosity! The piano was caked with several layers of the most hideous, streaked, greenish-yellow paint, as well as copious layers of polyurethane.
         It was the weekend before our September 11th fundraising drive in which this piano was to be in service. I felt distraught and conquered. One week to refinish this piano from a synagogue in Richmond by someone whose largest refinishing work had been a small desk. I won't say how that turned out. We certainly did have a challenging time getting it into a dumpster.
         This is one of the most horrifying projects I had ever been assigned. I shook the feeling and told myself that it was not going to be an issue. I started to plan my strategy the moment I was given the task. I knew my weekend would be filled with just trying to strip off 'slopped' coats of paint from the piano before I could even begin trying to tackle the rest of it. Tell me who would do that to a once beautiful piano such as this? Lively, and bring forth joy with its player at the helm, as I could imagine. I had to bring it back to life. Once again, it would shine. There could be no failure allowed whatsoever.
         After putting out my Marlboro Red, I knew I had no time to waste by sucking up as much nicotine as possible to get myself ready for the day. I unIocked the door to the warehouse, stretched my arm in, and turned off the security alarm. I stood there in the shadowy, narrow hallway with just a small flashlight to see by. It was deathly quiet. The pungent smell of old, rotting wood gripped my senses and took me back to feeling as if I were a child again terrified of the monsters underneath my bed. I braced myself to the initial foreboding reaction and swore quietly as I weaved my way through the construction materials in the hallway; as fast as a gazelle running from its starved, fang-baring enemy. The piano was on the second floor, but I could not bear the darkness that was engulfing the first floor. I HAD to turn on the lights. There was not a chance in hell that I was coming to get anything I needed for work without the first floor practically glowing with blinding light to the very recesses.
'Go to the end of the hall and switch on the light. Just do it! It's only 30ft away. Suck it up Josh!'
I shined the flashlight with poor illumination on the switch and ran for my life. 'Click'
          Part of the first five lights were on and I felt a little relief from that iciness running through my spine. The problem was that I had to make it to all the switches downstairs. Meaning, that I had to go through the unspeakable gas chamber exhibit, the abhorrent exhibit of Auschwitz and Birkenau, as well as the disturbing exhibit where my Director and his family, whom had survived the Holocaust, had to stay in a 5ft by 5ft cellar. The one exhibit that frightened me to the deep core of my being for hours was when I had to turn on the light in which there was a path running through an actual boxcar that was used to haul 'undesirables' to the concentration camps. The way that the museum had installed it; there was nowhere around it to go. 'Nowhere' One had no choice but to walk through. I stopped abruptly as I got to the pitch-black darkness of the vile boxcar. I shined my ever so slowly, dimming, flashlight on all the sections of the wooden beast. A myriad of thoughts started running through my head; faster and faster they went. Keeping time with my heartbeat. The windows, if you could call them windows, were filled with barbed wire and I could not see the sides and corners of the fiend on metal wheels.
'Oh God, I can see them and hear them in there! Moaning and sobbing loudly, calling me, reaching out for me!'


         Faceless, desperate, tortured souls were pleading with me to help them. By now, I'm so panicked that I just want to bolt for my Hyundai and go home as fast as that 4 cylinder could go; a small, white streak in the daytime. Alas, I knew I could not do that. There was an inescapable deadline. The piano---
'Okay, shine this flashlight on just the floor of the boxcar and go Josh. Go damn it! Go! You fucking paranoid asshole go through the damn boxcar! There's no one in there. No one---! Take off and hit the switch! One two three..no wait! One--two--three!'
I ran as if I was running for my lifeblood and turned on the last switch. My heart was threatening to erupt in my chest by this time. Thinking undeniably that, I was going to leave all of the lights on and tell the Director that I just forgot all of the lights downstairs. There's no way I could have gone through that again.
         I head up the creaking stairs to tackle the piano and to hopefully, play some music to settle my nerves. The piano seemed even more daunting than when I had seen it before; I immediately lost confidence. Did I have the ability to finish such a gigantic job? I barely knew where to start. All the while, telling myself that I could not fail. The stakes were too high. The fundraiser had to be the epitome of perfection.
         I grabbed my paint stripper, putty knives, and CD player for the Director's office and set up for the interminable day ahead. Luckily, most of the stripper that had been applied took off most of the paint on the largest areas and it was ready for the putty knives. Before I knew it I had been scraping rhythmically for two hours and my George Jones CD had long since stopped playing. My hands were severely aching as I finished a section of the piano that had many nooks and intricate swirls in the wood. My arms felt like oozing warm Jello and my hands were so numb that the putty knife I had been using fell to the floor with a loud clank, stirring up a deadly amount of dust to surround me.
         I knew that piano would not have that gorgeous mahogany stain, nor the gloss finish put on it by Sept. 11th. I only had five more 12 hour days to get done as much as I possibly could. Furthermore, even though I was giving it all my vigor before my time was up there was no questioning that this harrowing project would continuously haunt me. I was blankly staring at this monstrosity before me and in my immense anxiety, a thought crossed my mind, and I pondered a scene my imagination had soared with. What would have happened to me in Nazi Germany had been given this task to complete on schedule? Would I have been able to finish the piano under these noxious circumstances? There would never be an answer to this pernicious question. Or would there ever be? I doubt that I would have existed much longer in that scenario. I would have been another being in a boxcar going to my demise and knowing what was, most likely, in store for me. I would have been one of the faceless persons I had encountered in the boxcar downstairs, begging and praying for our survival. If you could call it that. All I knew was that, in the present, I would not be able to complete this on the impending date. The thoughts of torture and a mortifying death consumed my soul! I continued to gaze through the piano pondering the chronicles of my existing predicament. A victim presenting an unfinished duty during the Holocaust era was subjected to a certitude of sickening and ghastly experiments, persecution, by starvation and other means of slaughter. Which would I be subjected to?
         I studied a plethora of genocide studies in undergraduate school under Dr. Herbert Hirsch and knew the steps and systematic means of dealing with those who do not meet the Thstandards and rules set out in dealing with the perpetrators of these human rights atrocities. Even if you 'appease' them, it is usually a lost useless matter, as invariably, you cannot gratify a person or group who has been inculcated into a group mentality through their actions, brainwashing, and propaganda. The enforcers take no responsibility for their actions as it becomes a 'group' or 'mob' mentality. There are no ramifications for their actions anymore. Due to this psychological premise, they could savagely kill without remorse. The thoughts inundated me and apprehension, like no other, found me in the stillness of my surroundings. The ghosts swirled in the fog filled recesses of my exploding heart again. My stomach cringed.
         I ran outside of the warehouse immediately sinking on the concrete, with my overworked muscles twitching, and leaned back against the brick building. I surveyed my surroundings. Still completely alone. I lit up a cigarette and welcomed the nicotine filling my body. I relished my cigarette and the blast of cold caffeine from my powerful Mountain Dew as I watched the old trains go by above me. My Mountain Dew was easily guzzled down and the passenger trains caught my attention. As they passed at a faster speed, I could not make out what or who was inside. There were shadows of people though, that I could make out. Did they see me? Did they see the sign for the Virginia Holocaust Museum and find it eerily ironic, as I did, that their train had passed by this building? Or did they not even glance over at me or the museum at all while they drank cocktails, read their books, laughed with one another, and just enjoyed their trip to---somewhere. I bet my life on the fact that they did not notice, and if they did, it would only to see abandoned warehouses and me. The grimy, filthy, paint-flecked man sitting in front of a warehouse smoking. I, and the museum, were doubtlessly a mere blur to them; a loathsome undesirable. I imagined that the view of the shimmering canal and its boats on the other side of the tracks was considerably more pleasant to wonder at.
         These disturbing thoughts preyed upon me for the rest of the day as I toiled away with even more vigor and determination than before. I wanted to stand on the roof of the warehouse and somehow make the whole world notice the museum and remember the Holocaust and other nefarious crimes against humanity. Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Sierra Leone---many more! More and more I wanted to yell over and over again on top of the roof. Making even just one person notice me and not see me as an 'undesirable'! I wanted to open everyone's eyes to this inhumanity that seeps and crawls into our world to rip apart humankind. I wanted to unveil this demon and show those who were not aware of the truth, and that there has been no 'Never Again!'. Genocide did not end with the Holocaust. It is still showing its gnashing teeth and ghoulish face in the world today. Genocide is not to be seen as something that happens only when war breaks out. It can happen at any time, any place, just through the hatred of certain groups of people. It can happen at any time, it can happen right in the country you live in, and right in your backyard.
         After twelve hours of grueling work, I had the piano's main surfaces stripped down. The intricate details would have to wait until tomorrow. It would be difficult to complete the stripping, as I had to be careful not to dig into the wood in the small delicate crevices. The endeavor would be tedious and take a prodigious amount of time. I proceeded to leave and did what I previously said. Those lights stayed on and I quickly set the security alarm and bolted out of there. I headed home and could not wait to take a scalding shower to wash the dust, dirt, and utter grime off me.
         For the rest of the week, I spent even more than twelve hours a day at the museum trying to get the piano completely stripped, sanded, and stained to perfection. On the last day before the event, I had it stripped and sanded down to its natural wood. Although the Director and the tuner told me that I had done an amazing job, I felt like I had failed, and thought again about what would have happened to me in Nazi Germany, or any other genocidal occurrence for this unsuccessful task. It was such a disturbing and sickening thought that it would not let me rest. There was no gorgeous, shining mahogany finish on the forgotten piano, and this salvaged piece of history had crushed my hopes. I felt so incredibly small and vulnerable for having not saved a thing. It was not uncovered enough; it was not saved enough. I felt like I had let down six million and many more people that died a horrid death at the hands of 'evil'.
         When I arrived at the fundraiser, I stood in the back of the large room by the door. I didn't want to be seen at all. Anxiously, ready for the musical debut of the piano, that would sound good but to me look horrid from only a sanded, natural wood form. I was entirely embarrassed. When I looked again the spotlights were on the piano as the music started playing. With the lights shining on it, there was beauty in its pure bare truth! I had uvered the overt ugliness that existed into something that was going to be cherished, to survive, and I felt a sense of worthiness in my small fight against genocide and humanity in this world. It was also wonderful that others there admired what I had done and how comforting music coming from it filled their ears, their eyes, and minds. After many people had come up to me with admiration, I began to feel as if what I had done, was quite meaningful and was, had in fact, changed my perspective about my purposes in this world.
         Many people at the fundraiser wanted to come back and see the finished piano and I worked even more tirelessly. They were not disappointed I the least! There are times that we don't realize how we affect others with just a small piece of remembrance and honor for their struggles, trials, and severe tribulations. Letting them know, letting everyone on earth know, that you care deeply, heartfully, and will never stop working to make a dent into something larger than ourselves. I never ran through the boxcar again.
         The people in attendance at the fundraiser shared their stories and it gave them great joy to see that it had been rescued. My story was also heard through the music and atoms of that piano, as now I also had one to tell. I never had to run through that boxcar again. In fact, I touched my hand to the walls.