KEY NOTE

© 2001 James D. and Rebecca P. Pearce

The old piano sits in the big room in the Murfreesboro town building.

No one tries much any more to coax any tunes from the 1920s-vintage music machine. And if they did try, they probably wouldn't have much luck.

The ancient chord-banger saw its most melodious days a long time ago, when it was in the dance hall at the old Murfreesboro swimming pool ~ the one 'way back off the road down by the old Worrell's Millpond.

It set the tempo for a lot of courting couples in the early '30s, as the area's younger depression crowd sought temporary refuge from the work and the worries of the hard times.

When the swimming pool caved in under the financial pressures of the day, and the dance floor hosted its last pair of twirlers, the piano just sat there for a while, suffering from the cold, heat and humidity of the untended remnants of the hall of memories.

So when George's wife Christine decided she wanted a piano in her living room, George ~ who for a time had managed the old pool complex ~ went down and bought it for her and had it re-tuned. The purchase didn't require a lot of cash.

The piano was black, and kind of clashed with the other colors in Christine's well-kept parlor.

Christine, with the help of her clan, painted it. They first applied an "aluminum white" to keep the old black from bleeding through, and they followed up on this with a "wood white," more in keeping with Christine's color scheme.

Christine could play very well. An early student at Chowan College, she had studied the art there as well as under other mentors in her earlier years in towns further south, and on occasion had dreams of a career tickling the keys on the concert stage.

As a child, Thelma watched her mother play, and fascinated by the 88 music-makers at her finger-tips, learned to do a little one-hand music-manufacturing all her own.

Indulging her taste for tunes one day, Thelma for some reason held down one of the notes a little longer than usual.

It was a C-note, in one of the lower octaves.

While she had it down, something about the key caught her eye, and she leaned closer and squinted hard to see what was clearly inscribed there ~ in tiny letters in old, indelible black ink.

"I LOVE SEBA," it said.