Blind Piano Tuner

I loved to hear dad's "Children's Hour stories.

He was what I consider to be a great story-teller--never preachy--never boring--never going beyond the time limit of a good story--and always speaking from his own experience--in fact his stories were ALL about his experiences and though his experiences were not dramatic or even interesting in the usual humdrum real-as-life way--his subject matter and his easy conversational style made them memorable to me  so I would like to share several of them with you.

You can imagine dad and I.perched side by side on bar stools in the tiny kitchen area of his A-frame house very slowly sipping and savoring a small glass of Gallo port--dad talking and me all ears as he tells about his experience with the blind piano tuner.


When Dad was quite young, about 22, I suppose, he worked as a Circulation Manager for the Albuquerque Tribune. 

Part of his job was to visit the towns all over New Mexico by train to arrange for the “big city” newspapers to be sold.

One day he was in Las Vegas, New Mexico.  He was through there often and stayed at a hotel, which was frequented by traveling salesmen and such. 

A blind piano tuner was staying at the same hotel.  This blind man would go from little town to little town also by train tuning pianos for schools and for those few rich people who had them in their homes.  Dad said that in the “old days” there was not much work that a blind person could do to earn a living, but tuning pianos was one thing a blind person could do as well and maybe better than a person with sight.

It happened that the blind piano tuner was late coming back one evening and the hotel owner was worried about him. Maybe the blind man had had an accident—maybe he had fallen into a ditch or something?. The hotel owner asked Dad to walk out and try to find the blind man.

The hotel owner knew that the piano tuner had gone to the high school to tune their piano, which was in the school auditorium. so Dad checked the route the blind man would probably have walked without finding him and by the time Dad had reached the high school night had fallen and all was dark.

Dad said he went to the auditorium door, which was unlocked, and went in.  He called and the blind man answered from the stage at the other end of the building

“The room was pitch black until I turned on the lights,” Dad said, “I found the blind man working on the stage surrounded by parts of the piano which he was repairing. There were parts all over the stage and before I turned on the lights it was pitch black dark! Of course that didn’t matter to him, but it was a big surprise to me. How did he remember where all the parts were?”

After sixty years, Dad was still amazed by this, to him, wonderful feat.

Isn't that a good little story?

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