My Dad’s Hands

I just bought a used gui­tar, so I wan­na talk about hands.

I’ve always had big hands and even big­ger feet. Today I look like an aver­age-sized guy with big hands and feet, but when I was a kid? Oh boy.

From left to right: First Sis­ter, Thing 1, Thing 2, and holy crap I look creepy!

I have a pic­ture of my sis­ters and me tak­en when I was 4 years old. I didn’t look like a kid with big hands and feet; I looked like a kid wear­ing kayaks on his feet and wear­ing a pair of those giant foam hands they use to play Slap­jack on The Tonight Show With Jim­my Fal­lon.

The used gui­tar I just bought is a Gib­son Les Paul. I’ve always want­ed one, but they’re hel­la expen­sive. Best Half spot­ted a guy on Craigslist sell­ing a Les Paul, though—he was sell­ing a lot of equip­ment, includ­ing the Les Paul, for which he want­ed only $350.

A Les Paul these days can run $2,500 or more, espe­cial­ly if you get chrome PAF Hum­buck­er cov­ers, moth­er-of-pearl fin­ger­board inlays, the sun­burst fin­ish and some of the oth­er good­ies on the one I just bought.

I drove down to Cordes Junc­tion to take a look at the gui­tar. The sell­er was a groovy old­er guy who looked like a cross between Gan­dalf and Jer­ry Gar­cia: gray and white shoul­der-length hair, ZZ-Top beard, tie-dyed T‑shirt, the works. We could have been long-lost twins.

The Les Paul was in beau­ti­ful shape; almost mint con­di­tion. Gan­dar­cia said he had a bad shoul­der and the Les Paul was just too heavy, and he had arthri­tis so he couldn’t play as much as he used to any­way.

He didn’t care about get­ting his mon­ey back as much as he cared about find­ing a good home for the gui­tar. I liked him and I liked the Les Paul, so I bought it.

(He also had a 100-watt Mar­shall amp he want­ed to place in a good home, but I like being mar­ried so I regret­ful­ly declined.)

Click to embiggenate!

Back in 1982, when I was 20, I saved up and bought a Gib­son Invad­er, which was a bud­get Les Paul: It didn’t have the sculpt­ed maple top, the moth­er-of-pearl fin­ger­board inlays, and oth­er pricey options.

But it was still a damn fine gui­tar, and since it was less expen­sive it was like hav­ing a project car: I didn’t mind hot-rod­ding it up. I replaced the bridge pick­up with a Sey­mour Dun­can mod­el I found at a pawn shop; drilled a hole between the knobs and added a phase switch­er; yanked out the stock pots and installed but­ter-smooth CDS (or was it Alpha-Con­trol? Don’t remem­ber) pots with hand­made caps so crys­talline they could make a brave man weep, lock­ing strap buttons—Eddie Van Halen may have coined the term Franken­Strat, but I think I could legit­i­mate­ly claim the name Mutant Invad­er.

My friend Rob, who has a habit of nam­ing things I own, named the gui­tar Sledge. And I played Sledge, to use a tired old cliché, until my fin­gers bled.

Not long after I adopt­ed Sledge, I moved in with my friend George. George is an amaz­ing drum­mer, and our liv­ing room was jammed with both our stere­os, my gui­tar and amp and oth­er accou­trements, and George’s drum kit, which looked like the moth­er ship from Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, except it was big­ger and more expen­sive.

Ama­teurs.

And we had a lot of friends who would come hang out: the afore­men­tioned Rob, Tori, Dave, Daniel—who gave me an Elec­tro-Har­monix Gold­en Throat talk box: DAMN Daniel!—Kim, John, and I’m sure there were oth­ers.

And they were all excel­lent musi­cians, and we would jam, which means they would jam, because I was still learn­ing to play, so I stum­bled around in the back­ground on gui­tar, sound­ing like Lin­da McCart­ney sort of play­ing key­boards and kind of singing along with Paul, who was too kind to tell her the sound guy had her micro­phone turned off.

Harsh truth: I loved play­ing gui­tar, but I was caught in that frus­trat­ing trap of hav­ing juu­u­ust enough tal­ent to under­stand what real­ly good gui­tarists were doing, but know­ing I’d nev­er ever be that good.

That was okay. I didn’t need to make a liv­ing play­ing gui­tar, and I was lucky enough to spend time with some real­ly good musi­cians and enjoy both­er­ing the neigh­bors with them.

Like most gui­tar guys, I accu­mu­lat­ed a lot of gear: stomp box­es (although like most gui­tar guys, I had five favorite stomp box­es, but unlike most gui­tar guys, thanks to my size-13 feet they had to be spread out in a 10-foot long line of cables so I could stomp on just one of them at a time), a real live Fend­er tube amp that tried very sin­cere­ly to kill me, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry, and a pink pais­ley Tele­cast­er that yes, looked just like the one Prince played, although I hadn’t heard of him yet.

I mutat­ed the Tele­cast­er even more; pri­mar­i­ly with EMG active pick­ups that were encased in black ceram­ic blocks and looked unbear­ably cool, plus oth­er stuff I won’t bore you with, before I final­ly admit­ted I just didn’t like the Tele­cast­er.

Oh, it looked cool and it sound­ed good when I played it, but it sound­ed GREAT when any of my real musi­cian friends played it. Also, Rob nev­er named it any­thing, even though it looked like it was paint­ed with Pep­to Bis­mol. What was he sup­posed to name it–Dr. Pep and the Toe Biz Maulers? I’m sor­ry, but–wait; that’s actu­al­ly an awe­some name for a band, much less a gui­tar. But I think he knew it wasn’t going to work out for us and he didn’t want to make the breakup any more painful.

It was the neck. A lot of Fend­er gui­tars have one-piece rock maple necks, and the Tele­cast­er was one of them. But it was too skin­ny, and with my freaky huge hands I felt like I was play­ing a pen­cil.

Our pastor’s son was 12 at the time. He’d saved up lawn-mow­ing mon­ey and bought a real­ly beat-up, life­less acoustic gui­tar. He was sav­ing up to buy an elec­tric gui­tar, and then he planned to save up even more and buy an ampli­fi­er.

So I gave him the Tele­cast­er and said he could just wor­ry about sav­ing up for a new amp. I didn’t see any point in try­ing to recoup the mon­ey I’d spent fix­ing it up when I could give it a good home with some­one who need­ed it and was already a far bet­ter gui­tarist than me.

And 30 years lat­er, I found a beau­ti­ful Les Paul that need­ed a good home. Kar­ma, baby.

Not acid-washed jeans. I wore bell-bot­tom jeans because my feet are so big, but no one sold acid-washed bell-bot­toms, so Rob and I would put our jeans in the sink, splash bleach on them, then throw them in the wash­er. Rob called ’em “Cloud Pants.”

I have exact­ly one pho­to of myself from the years I spent liv­ing with George and the musi­cians’ com­mune we oper­at­ed: I think I was 22, and I’m play­ing Sledge. I was about as tall as I am now, but pipeclean­er skin­ny, and my hands are still ridicu­lous­ly big, if not as X‑Man mutant big as they were when I was a kid.

When 1995 rolled around, I’d been mar­ried for a while and No. 1 Son was on the way, so I did what any red-blood­ed Amer­i­can man would do: I quit my job, sold our house and moved us all to Ore­gon so I could go to col­lege.

And while we were pack­ing up to move, I made two bad deci­sions that still haunt me: I looked at the big pile of gui­tars and amps and stomp box­es and oth­er gear I’d accu­mu­lat­ed, and I decid­ed it took up way too much room.

So I loaded up the car with all my gear, except for a grungy old JDS acoustic I want­ed to keep because I liked drag­ging it to con­certs to see if I could get sig­na­tures on it, so Randy Stone­hill, Phil Keag­gy, Ter­ry Tal­bot and Bar­ry McGuire had all signed it.

The oth­er bad deci­sion was that I had an antique bar­ber chair I’d bought from an activ­i­ty ther­a­pist at the men­tal hos­pi­tal where I worked,1 and decid­ed it was just too big and heavy to move all the way to Ore­gon.

Some­times you see these memes ask­ing what you would say to your­self when you were a teenag­er; I would tell myself not to get rid of my gui­tar stuff and not to give away the bar­ber chair. But I prob­a­bly wouldn’t lis­ten. I’m stu­pid that way.

(Speak­ing of the musi­cians who’ve signed my grungy old JDS, I also have a Vil­lage Inn kids’ col­or­ing book/placemat that No. 1 Son and Bar­ry McGuire col­ored togeth­er when No. 1 Son was 3, but that’s yet anoth­er sto­ry).

So I drove to a music store in Tope­ka, the name of which I for­get, but it was on 17th Street behind a no-kill cat shel­ter that used to be a Hardee’s, and I trad­ed in all my gear on a real­ly nice 12-string Wash­burn acoustic, which I still have but play only on the rare occa­sion when I want to play Supertramp’s “Give a Lit­tle Bit,” because my stu­pid-big fin­gers on my stu­pid-big hands make the gui­tar sound like a cou­ple of cats run­ning around fight­ing on top of it.

It didn’t take long to regret my deci­sion. Three days lat­er, as we hit Inter­state 70 west on our way to Ore­gon, I exclaimed “Why the HELL did I get rid of 12 years’ worth of stuff I loved? Why didn’t I just get rid of the sofa or the TV or Best Half?”

Best Half, who was in the car with me, expressed her dis­plea­sure at this remark by giv­ing me a pinch that still hurts today.

And so I went to col­lege and met many oth­er musi­cians who were bet­ter than I’ll ever be, includ­ing Andy Gure­vich (the tit­u­lar guru of the Gure­vichi­an cult, which is also anoth­er sto­ry), Matt, John, and some more folks I hope I don’t offend by not remem­ber­ing them.

And I watched them play and I enjoyed it, but I missed being able to stum­ble around use­less­ly behind them.

And I vowed that even though I was a ho-hum gui­tarist, some­day I would buy anoth­er elec­tric gui­tar and amp and oth­er fun gad­gets, just as soon as I could afford to feed my fam­i­ly with some­thing more than Top Ramen.

But that did­n’t hap­pen until I bought the Les Paul, because I was too busy ruin­ing my hands. Which reminds me of my dad’s funer­al, which I’ll get to in a minute.

I had a series of stu­pid­ly dan­ger­ous jobs in my 20s and ear­ly 30s: I worked night shift in a con­ve­nience store, in a state hos­pi­tal with the men­tal­ly ill, and as a res­cue mis­sion chap­lain before col­lege. No, not as dan­ger­ous as being a cop or a fire­fight­er, but then again cops and fire­fight­ers have train­ing and equip­ment and insur­ance and stuff.

Dur­ing and after col­lege I also worked as a con­crete mason and on secu­ri­ty teams in col­lege and in church and else­where.

After that I got a job doing web devel­op­ment, which I loved, but which also helped me build up a love­ly nascent case of carpal tun­nel syn­drome.

But after all the stu­pid dan­ger­ous jobs I’d had, I got bored with hav­ing a safe office job, so I joined a Kem­po karate school to spend more time with my kids, and wound up lik­ing it enough to get my sec­ond-degree black belt and help­ing teach (even though I was about as good at mar­tial arts as I was at gui­tar). Which also did not do my hands any favors.

Com­e­dy is not pret­ty.

I have some real­ly cool scars and sto­ries about griev­ous injuries to my hands and fore­arms: A spec­tac­u­lar (human!) bite scar on the back of my right hand; a scar and nerve dam­age on my right wrist from being hit with a bro­ken bot­tle; a frac­tured ring fin­ger that healed crooked; a nasty burn scar on my thumb from being splashed with sul­fu­ric acid (yet anoth­er sto­ry), sev­er­al bro­ken knuck­les, assort­ed con­nec­tive tis­sue injuries from break­ing bricks at Kem­po demos, and oth­er stuff I for­get.

That was just my right hand. I abused my left hand even worse:

Dur­ing a Kem­po spar­ring match I blocked a punch with my left pinky fin­ger2, which emit­ted a glo­ri­ous­ly hor­ri­ble snap that made every­one in the room wince; I caught my hand between an engine block and a garage floor; I got hit on the back of my fore­arm so hard it spawned a bunch of gan­glion cysts; and I got mauled by dog who took a cou­ple of good chomps out of my fore­arm and hand and left behind a big numb area.

Oh, and I also got diag­nosed with MS, which caus­es some stiff­ness and numb­ness in my left arm and hand, and to top it all off I’ve got a bit of arthri­tis here and there in both hands that I’m sure will be loads more fun in the future.

(A cou­ple months ago I saw an ortho­pe­dist to look at some arthri­tis in my left hand. They sent me an intake pack­et and want­ed exten­sive, detailed info on any injuries I’d had to my hands. So I wrote down all that stuff you just read. The doc­tor came in, skimmed my stuff on the clip­board, and said, “What’s all this? Are you Jack­ie Chan’s body­guard or what?” I told him I’m just clum­sy.)

Just before Dad’s funer­al two years ago, I… what? No, that’s not a non sequitur; I said I was going to talk about my dad’s funer­al right up there, did­n’t I? Pay atten­tion!

Just before Dad’s funer­al start­ed, Mom and my sis­ters and my kids and Best Half and I all went up to view him in his cas­ket, and to give him some gifts: I gave him a John­ny Cash CD; The Chow­der gave him a lit­tle apple pie (anoth­er sto­ry), and oth­ers I can’t remem­ber.

The funer­al direc­tor was there, dis­cussing Dad’s appear­ance with Mom, and he looked at Dad’s hands and remarked, “These are the hands of a man who worked hard.”

True. Dad was a glazier for more than 40 years; he also did handy­man work on the side for those 40 years and also rebuilt or remod­eled just about every­thing in our house to boot.

After he retired he did handy­man stuff almost full-time (I remem­ber him jok­ing that retire­ment was bor­ing, what with only 40–50 hours of work a week). He was in demand as the main­te­nance guy for a num­ber of rental hous­es and small apart­ment build­ings.

Today I was look­ing at a pic­ture of Dad tak­en in April, 2002: He’s sit­ting on a hotel room bed next to No. 1 Son, who was 6 years old, and he’s hold­ing The Chow­der, who was 7 months old.

Right to left: No. 1 Son, The Chow­der, a cou­ple bags of wal­nuts, and Dad

The hotel room bed was in Chang­sha, Hunan Province, in Chi­na. And the rea­son we were there was to adopt The Chow­der.

Dad’s hands were small­er than mine (hell, Bigfoot’s hands are small­er than mine). But they were thick and cal­lused and cord­ed with mus­cle and scars, and they looked like two lumpy bags of wal­nuts.

Right now I’m the same age Dad was in that pho­to. And while I’ve nev­er made a liv­ing work­ing with my hands, oth­er than the afore­men­tioned stint as a con­crete mason in col­lege, I like to think I’ve inher­it­ed some of his bet­ter traits:

He had a bea­t­up old poster in the glass shop he worked in; it said “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

He wasn’t preachy or pushy; all he did was set a stan­dard and then demon­strate it.

I deliv­ered the eulo­gy at his funer­al; lat­er some guys he’d worked with, plus his for­mer boss, told me his co-work­ers would gripe at times that Dad was kind of slow and didn’t turn things around as fast as every­one else.

His for­mer boss told me how they answered that gripe: “Yeah; he’s a bit slow­er. But he nev­er, ever has to go back and redo any­thing.”

It’s only been for about the last 10 years of my life that I’ve real­ized just how much that influ­enced me, with­out him lec­tur­ing or preach­ing at me once.

I’ve owned three hous­es; I’ve worked as a writer, a graph­ic design­er, an edi­tor, a web design­er and a web devel­op­er. When I do stuff I try to find a way to do it ele­gant­ly and sim­ply, to avoid quick-and-dirty solu­tions in favor of doing it right the first time.

Draw me. Draw me like one of your French Bull­dogs!

The oth­er day I was sit­ting on the floor in our liv­ing room and tun­ing the Les Paul. Pep­per was lying in front of me with her head on my knee, gaz­ing ador­ing­ly up at me like she was Rose DeWitt and I was Jack Daw­son.

Best Half thought that was cute and took a pic­ture with her phone.

When I saw the pho­to I chuck­led at the way Pep­per was mak­ing eyes at me, but then I noticed that my hands looked like lumpy sacks of wal­nuts, just like my dad’s hands.

Most of the jobs I’ve had in my life don’t cre­ate a tan­gi­ble lega­cy; I can’t point at very many things I’ve made or fixed, or art­work or books I’ve writ­ten or things I’ve built.

But my hands look a lot like my dad’s hands—a coin­ci­dence of genet­ics and life expe­ri­ences for sure, but I can live with hav­ing huge, half-ruined hands if it means I can hon­or my dad’s lega­cy a lit­tle bit.

Oh by the way—my friend Rob named the Les Paul for me: Its name is now More Paul.

Some Disassembly Required

I know how to prove that men and women are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent:

Put a man and a woman into sep­a­rate rooms alone with a new appliance—say, a bread machine—and watch what hap­pens. The woman will make some bread. On the oth­er hand—bear in mind that this is a brand new appli­ance, right out of the box—the man will take the bread machine apart to see how it works.

There’s a corol­lary here: I have a sermon/demo I’ve pre­sent­ed in var­i­ous church­es, where­in I break a stack of con­crete blocks, then talk about how break­ing con­crete blocks with your bare hands is just exact­ly like becom­ing a Chris­t­ian and going to heav­en.

After I’d done it a num­ber of times I real­ized that when I said looky here; I’m going to smash all these con­crete blocks with my bare hands, the audi­ence response is divid­ed right down the mid­dle between men and women:

The men would say, “Cool!”

The women say, “Why?“3

I’m not sure what dri­ves men to take things apart. Maybe some psy­chi­a­trist has it fig­ured out. If so, I bet the psy­chi­a­trist is a man. Why? For the same rea­son psy­chol­o­gy has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a male pur­suit: Psy­cho­an­a­lyz­ing peo­ple is very much like tak­ing them apart to see how they work.

I think the dri­ve to take things apart is genet­ic, not learned. For instance, I saw a TV show once about Under­writ­ers Lab­o­ra­to­ries. This com­pa­ny takes new prod­ucts, dis­as­sem­bles them down into mol­e­cules to see how they’re designed, and then fig­ures out inge­nious ways to break them.

Under­writ­ers Labs pays the guys in white lab coats you see on TV com­mer­cials who build a robot arm to open and close a refrig­er­a­tor door 38 bil­lion times in two weeks. All guys, mind you—you nev­er see women in the com­mer­cials. These are the men who send cars hurtling into con­crete walls at 90 miles an hour to see what will hap­pen to the dum­mies inside.

I’ve often dreamed about work­ing for one of those com­pa­nies that blow up build­ings so that they col­lapse into their own base­ments.

Odd­ly enough, their research has con­clu­sive­ly proven over and over again that the dum­mies (sur­prise!) get demol­ished. But for some rea­son, they still find it nec­es­sary to crash an aver­age of 10 cars a week.

Don’t tell me it’s all about safe­ty and research—these guys are hav­ing the time of their lives. I’m not sure why Under­writ­ers Labs even both­ers to pay them; most men would prob­a­bly work there for free. I know I would.

I’ve often dreamed about work­ing for Under­writ­ers Lab­o­ra­to­ries. I’ve also dreamed about work­ing for one of those com­pa­nies that blow up build­ings so that they col­lapse into their own base­ments (c’mon—you have, too, haven’t you? Let’s see a show of hands, guys … I knew it!).

My favorite destruc­tive fan­ta­sy, though, involves work­ing for one of the big auto man­u­fac­tur­ers. Their research depart­ments have teams that secret­ly buy com­peti­tors’ cars. Then they com­plete­ly dis­as­sem­ble the cars and mount all the parts on sheets of ply­wood, which they hang in a ware­house.

You must under­stand, though—when I say they dis­as­sem­ble a car, I’m talk­ing a lev­el of dis­as­sem­bly rarely seen on this earth. If a butch­er ren­dered a cow the way these guys take on a car, he would need 17 square acres of coun­ter­top. Every sin­gle part in the car is bro­ken down com­plete­ly: The door locks are tak­en apart into piles of tiny springs and wafers. The engine is trans­formed into a heap of pis­tons, rings, bolts, bush­ings, springs, valves and bear­ings. The starter motor is unwound to see how much wire is in the arma­tures.

Every hook, pin, screw, nut, bolt, gear, spring, bush­ing, sta­ple, clip, clamp, strap and wire in the car is unfas­tened, until the engi­neers have thou­sands of parts to cat­a­logue and mount on the boards. They even unstitch all the uphol­stery, sep­a­rate glued-togeth­er pieces, and cut all the welds apart until they have the orig­i­nal pieces of met­al that make up the body and frame.

They say this is done to help them bet­ter under­stand their com­peti­tors’ designs. But it sounds like a labor of love to me. I bet they draw straws to see who gets to take things apart and who has to do the paper­work.

Yep, I’d be real­ly good at that sort of thing; I’ve always been a cham­pi­on dis­as­sem­bler myself. When I was 8, my par­ents gave me a watch. I pried off the back to see how it worked (and my moth­er has nev­er quite for­giv­en me). Since then, I have dis­as­sem­bled elec­tric razors, toast­ers, an elec­tric knife, radios, car stere­os and tape decks, a vari­able speed drill, an elec­tric gui­tar, a See ‘N Say, and any­thing else I could get my hands on.

Last year I sawed an 8‑foot-wide alu­minum satel­lite dish in half.

When I was 19, I took the engine out of my car and put it back. It was so much fun I did it again a year lat­er. Last year I sawed an 8‑foot-wide alu­minum satel­lite dish in half (don’t ask).

I sup­pose (I said don’t ask!) I can under­stand why, when my par­ents gave me a bicy­cle for my 24th birth­day, my moth­er looked me right in the eye and with a straight face said, “Now don’t go tak­ing this apart to see how it works!” She need­n’t have wor­ried. Bicy­cles were kid stuff; I was in the big leagues by that time.

The all-time high­light of my decon­struc­tion­al­ist career was when I mur­dered a piano. My room­mate, George, had bought an old upright piano for $100. This beast was made by a Ger­man com­pa­ny called Gul­bransen, and it was so heavy it took eight peo­ple to move it into our house. I think mov­ing one of the rocks at Stone­henge would have been eas­i­er. The piano’s wheels left ruts in the wood on our front porch, it was so heavy. In fact, I think the Ger­mans designed that piano to hold pill­box doors shut against ene­my mor­tar fire in World War II. It was that kind of heavy.

Any­way, after we all got her­nias mov­ing this bat­tle­ship anchor of a piano, George dis­cov­ered it had six keys that did­n’t work at all. The remain­ing 82 were so far out of tune they made my dog howl when we struck them. George called a piano tuner, who came over, lis­tened to the piano, and then left, laugh­ing so hard he was drool­ing.

Need­less to say, George did­n’t want to take the piano along when he got ready to move out a year lat­er. The prob­lem was that he had no way to dis­pose of it, and he was too kind­heart­ed to sell it to some oth­er sucker—I mean, vic­tim.

So while George was at work one evening, I decid­ed to sur­prise him: I took the piano apart and put it in a Dump­ster in a park­ing lot behind our house. I used pli­ers to cut the strings; a crow­bar took care of every­thing else (cham­pi­on dis­as­sem­blers don’t need hun­dreds of tools; that’s for wimps like Tim Allen).

Over the course of an hour or so that night, my friend, Dave, and I stealth­ily car­ried the dis­mem­bered piano to the Dump­ster, arm­load by arm­load. Final­ly, only two pieces were left: the back frame, which was made of huge oak beams, and the harp, a thick steel frame­work over which the strings had been stretched. These pieces weighed sev­er­al hun­dred pounds each and were the only parts that were dif­fi­cult to maneu­ver into the Dump­ster.

The Dump­ster squat­ted at the end of the alley like a land mine as George and I glee­ful­ly peered out the upstairs bed­room win­dow.

George near­ly had a heart attack when he got home and found noth­ing but a major dent in the car­pet where his piano had been.

At 5 a.m. the next morn­ing, George woke me excit­ed­ly. One of those trucks that picks up Dump­sters and turns them upside down to emp­ty them was rum­bling up the alley toward the Dump­ster. The Dump­ster squat­ted at the end of the alley like a land mine as George and I glee­ful­ly peered out the upstairs bed­room win­dow.

The dri­ver posi­tioned the load­er’s arms in the slots on the Dump­ster’s sides and turned on the hoist. George and I clutched our sides with laugh­ter as the truck­’s engine roared—and noth­ing hap­pened. The dri­ver scratched his head and put the hoist into a low­er gear. With the truck­’s engine bel­low­ing in protest, its sus­pen­sion groan­ing and the hoist’s gears screech­ing, the Dump­ster slow­ly left the ground.

As we held our breath, the Dump­ster turned over, the lid flipped open and the harp and frame tum­bled out into the truck­’s bed, which—and I knew God loved me when I saw it—was emp­ty. The harp and frame land­ed flat in the truck­’s bed with a resound­ing, thun­der­ous boom. The rest of the pieces slid out on top, crash­ing and rat­tling into a heap atop the frame.

The noise echoed up and down the predawn street; lights began appear­ing in win­dows. The dri­ver and his helper stag­gered out of the truck, hold­ing their ears, and climbed the side of the bed, no doubt think­ing an aster­oid had just land­ed in the truck.

They looked over the side of the bed in aston­ish­ment. I could hear them excit­ed­ly ques­tion­ing each oth­er: “How on God’s green earth did a piano get in there?” the dri­ver said in amaze­ment.

I closed my eyes and sighed wist­ful­ly, know­ing I would prob­a­bly nev­er again expe­ri­ence a moment so sub­lime this side of eter­ni­ty.