Are you tired of tooting your own horn?
Here’s your chance to try playing your own pipes. Well, not YOUR pipes exactly, but they’d be yours if you’d like to stop by the Garrettsville United Methodist Church and pick up an octave or two. Here’s the deal :
When the abovementioned GUMC recently renovated, refurbished and updated its vintage (circa 1913) pipe organ, there were pieces/parts removed to be replaced by new musical apparatus…apparati?…stuff. These pieces/parts were just too COOL to be pitched( although some of the REALLY long ones—eight -footers– had to go to that Big Recital Hall in the Sky) and they’ve been stashed away in the church basement since that time. But now, “the time has come, the Walrus said”, to do something with these artifacts to free up some space and move on…but they’re STILL just too COOL to pitch, if that can be avoided. There are bunches of these antiques in boxes waiting to be re-purposed, re-used, adopted by somebody.
There are metal pipes that sound like tin whistles—look sort of like them too—or like steamboat whistles, with the same heft. There are wooden pipes that have the mellowest tone imaginable. The metal pipes are round and heavy-ish (mostly lead); the wooden ones are square and lighter than one might think. Some are only about ten inches long, some are shouldering up to the departed eight-footers. They have the tone that they are supposed to sound engraved on the lip somewhere, so you could assemble a sort of giant Pan-pipes affair on your back porch, should you, being handy, choose to do so(Take THAT, you wussy wind chimes!). They’d make a one-of-a-kind accent piece in your music room or over the mantel. I’m not sure what kind of wood the wooden ones are made of but it’s older than most of us around here and might well be made into something neat if there are any interested woodworkers around. Right now every one of them is really grimy and in need of some cleaning (I never want to overdo it in the cleaning department. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” ?…I say it’s next to impossible) and a little TLC.
Anyway, anyway, anyway…anyone who’d be interested in acquiring one—or more—of these treasures should inquire at the GUMC (office open 9:00a.m.—1:00p.m., Tuesday through Friday) . A donation would be appreciated but not strictly necessary (Even new organs have to be maintained, y’know).
Toot toot!
