The Player Piano #RMF2019 #blogboost

This piano is a long ago memory for me, of a place I visited overnight when I was 17 years old and living in New York City.

I never dreamed I would run into it again in October of 2019.  Nor did I know that I would eventually move to the area where I saw this piano and live there for over 30 years.  But life is like that.

My spouse and I took a tour yesterday of a historic mansion on the edge of downtown Binghamton, New York.  It's a teaching museum now, with the mansion part normally closed to the public.  These tours aren't given that often, but New York State held a Pathways of History event yesterday and today and tours of normally closed parts was offered.

After the tour, I saw this piano on display.  The maker was "Link" and there is an interesting history surrounding Link player pianos that I should blog more about one of these days.  There was a sign (you can see it on the right side of the piano) asking that people not touch it.  It's a part of history, now, possibly too fragile to be played.  I wonder.

 A woman and a child were examining it.  The woman was explaining that when she was growing up, you could put a quarter in the machine and the piano would play.  She then turned to me, and said "do you remember doing that?"

I started to tell her "no, I didn't grow up here" but suddenly the memory came back, of a day I was with my childhood best friend, and her mother had driven us both up to Binghamton to pick up some artwork her uncle had on display in a Binghamton gallery.  We stayed overnight, and we visited a museum.  We were both fascinated by the automatic piano.  We fed it quarters and it played.

It took me years after I moved here to realize where I had been. I've seen the piano since (it is sometimes on display) but never remembered about being able to play it.

So, I quickly added, "but when I was 17, I visited Binghamton, and was able to play it, too."

I hope this woman's daughter gets the chance to play it one day.

I love player pianos, and I love Billy Joel, the Piano Man.

Linking with Mary of Jingle Jangle Jungle and her Rocktober Music Fest.

Day 13 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost