Fraudulent Dancing Mulberry Roots

We inherited an old pump organ from furniture left in a building that we purchased six years ago. It has sat in our garage up in Woodland Park since then, quietly aging ungracefully, stuck between an old TV cabinet and boxes of yet to be recycled pots and pans, and whatnot.

About a year ago, Steve Leininger, a friend and organ/piano repair fella in his youth, checked out the organ and declared it a 19th Century George P. Bent product. It’s estimated dating is anywhere from 1889 to 1905, because the serial numbers for the Bent organs went through two iterations. We’re not really sure. But, the organ has no electric motors, no plywood, and two circular holders for lanterns. In any case, at over 100 years old it is closing in on ancient. 

We decided, finally, to donate it to a Help the Needy fundraiser, coming up this evening. It’s the latest reason for not giving it away. We hope some caring person will see some value in it, take it home, and rescue it from our garage.

And that brings me to the subject of dancing.

There will be dancing at the fundraiser. Joanne and I always enjoyed dancing together, though we don’t know the difference between a 2-step and the twist. Our dancing doesn’t know, that is. I have the undesirable reputation as a person who doesn’t like to dance. I have had different physical problems for the past several years, which are excellent excuses for not dancing. Not sure why I use the excuse, because I love dancing with Joanne.

And that brings me to the subject of canards.

A canard is an unfounded story. Canards are excuses. Excuses, therefore, are unfounded stories. They sound pretty good, especially with credible-sounding, emotionally laced Mulberries. Mulberries are members of the Sycamore family, which I recently learned studying Luke, Chapter 17, for our Lexio prayer group. Sycamores have root systems that are extremely complicated, lengthy, and intertwined purposely into the clumps of deep rocks and fissures in order to assure that the tree cannot be budged.

Excuses, though, do not bear fruit like a Mulberry tree. They intertwine into lengthy and complicated tales, but that’s where the analogy stops. Unless you read Dr. Seuss’s book “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” A young boy is prodded into making up a grand, inventive tall tale about a simple cart heading down Mulberry Street which turns into a veritable circus of unbelievable activity. That book about an incredible tale of lies, excusing the boy from not paying attention on his walk from home, made Dr. Seuss more famous and more wealthy than any harvesting of Mulberries. 

And that brings me to the subject of pump organs.

Our pump organ is probably little different than the old wooden television console that it has been sitting next to for 6 years. Impractical. Large. Long lost “period” fashionable. And, yet, saved from the trash heap simply due to its existence in our garage.

I fear that no one will bid on the organ, sensing a canard from the owners. We are offering a Mulberry. They might notice an old man who has forgotten how to dance, and link the 19th century artifact with a dancing fraud. I may jinx the future happiness of the George P. Bent Pump Organ.

We’ll see. It may be too sad to update you. If it doesn’t sell, I may never dance again.

(the tentacles of my excuse potentially widens.)

POST DANCE:

We danced. The organ sold for $350. Other than a small glass of wine and a semi-decadent dessert, no Mulberries. God is good.