This coming March, my wife Callie and I will celebrate seven years of marriage.
Two weeks ago, we completed our sixth move in those seven years.
I sure hope this one is the last.
That’s not just because we absolutely love our new house, but it’s also because Callie has this extremely heavy standup piano – and it has survived all six moves.
It’s a piano Callie inherited, and it is a very nice one. I’m not a musician, so I like it for both the aesthetics and hearing Callie play.
I hope one day my girls will take lessons from their mother and will play the instrument as well.
And I hope, for my back’s sake, it is in that same house.
When we moved from Tuscaloosa to Indianola, we had movers load and unload our stuff from the truck.
After helping to move that piano four other times, the feeling watching six college kids carry that thing inside our first home in Indianola was unexplainably joyous.
But for this move, I went the cheap route.
I figured, we’re only moving about a mile away. How hard could it be to get all of our stuff across Sunflower Avenue and into the new place?
Well, it actually went by pretty smooth. That is until it got down to the heavy stuff.
I have to give a shout out to Jason Whittington and Lindsey Waters. The three of us spent a single night, carrying beds, couches, recliners, TVs, chests and other heavy things from one house to another.
And then came time to move the piano.
The last time I helped move the thing was September 2015, when we moved into our home in Tuscaloosa.
We had gotten the low-riding U-Haul truck stuck in the steep driveway, and in order to get it unstuck, we had to unload the entire truck, lugging all of the contents up the tall hill.
The last thing on the truck was that trusty old piano.
Six of us carried that monster up the grassy hill – a few feet at a time mind you- to its destination.
Now that thing has either gotten heavier, or I need to hit the gym in a serious way, because the last move was serious business.
The three of us thought we could get it off the trailer and roll it on a dolly to the front door of the new house.
We were wrong.
So, it’s about 10 o’clock at night, and we have a long trailer with a piano laying on its back.
Despite my protests, Callie came out and insisted on taking a corner.
By that time, we didn’t have many options.
The four of us successfully got it off the trailer and onto a dolly. We rolled it to the front door, and we climbed what seemed like three really tall steps to get it into the living room.
Once inside, the thing pretty much rolled on the floor to its final resting spot.
I told Callie soon after it was situated, “you know, we’re going to be here for an awful long time, because I ain’t moving that thing again.”
I hope I’m right, because we love Indianola and Sunflower County. And as said before, we love the new house.
If someone decides to run me out of town on a rail one day, they’re going to have to deal with the piano.
