When I moved out of my big house on the Big Island to my little apartment by the ocean, I tried to bring the 1901-vintage upright grand piano with me. The half-dozen movers tried for nearly an hour to get the thing down the outside stairway (the house had been built with an eight-foot "crawl space", later partly finished, so the living area was mostly on the "second" floor). It just wouldn't go. I kept saying, "We got it into the house, so I know you can get it out. Finally, it hit me: the railings had been added to the stairway AFTER we moved in. I left the piano there for the new owner to enjoy.

Unfortunately, six years of living near the ocean and under the 160 inches a year of Hilo rains had pretty much wrecked what had been a beautiful instrument. If I'd had the $6,000 or so I'd been told it would take to restore it, I would have added a few hundred to take off the railing and put it back! Of course, I would then have found out that it was too big for either the elevator or the stairwell of my new place....

And I know it wasn't a piano, but the song always reminds me of this story.

Aloha,
Mark