The green piano sat in the far corner of the living room, an old, beat up piano that was crudely painted lime green. But as a little boy I was fascinated by it. I would sit and play the cracked ivory white keys and worn black ebony sharp and flat keys. 

I noticed that if I played every other white key I got a nice sound, so I would move that up the keyboard, playing what I now know are the ascending chords C, D minor, E minor, F, G, A minor and that mysterious B chord, B diminished.

Sometimes I would play bombastic improvisations and then report to my mother, who was cooking at the far end of the house, the name of my latest invention, perhaps a “sonata in F sharp minor”. 

The classical radio stations from New York City were often playing in our house, so I knew what the name of a classical piece was supposed to sound like, having heard so many from the refined voices of the announcers.

Looking back it strikes me odd that piano lessons were never offered. My mother knew only the tiniest amount and she could not teach me. I suspect that the idea of piano lessons was just too expensive, or perhaps too bourgeois for my old-left parents. The school system would teach us band instruments, and that was more acceptably working class.

I know not how the idea to destroy the old green piano arose. But on some weekend day, my father and brother Fred yanked the piano outside the house and broke it all apart. Then they loaded the broken pieces onto the wagon hitched behind the tractor, then drove to the bottom corner of the bottom field and threw the parts over the stone wall into the junk pile that was a shameful but hidden aspect of the farm.

 It is difficult to imagine my mother giving approval to the destruction of the piano, specially since it was not replaced, not until after my father died.

When I interviewed my mother on video, late in her life, it didn’t occur to me to ask about the fate of the old green piano.

I know that the story is true, I watched them destroy the piano and cart away the pieces. At that time I was too much in awe of my father and brother Fred, so I suspect that I squelched any objections and any feelings of sadness.

It is a story that simply doesn’t fit properly into my understanding of who we were as a family, as people.