The G# organ pipe

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

There are so many stories. Every window looking out, every front door opening in has one if not many stories to share. Every roadway, sidewalk and woodland path is filled with the footsteps of passersby, each with their own unique story to tell. The creek valley is no different.

It was a beautiful late-winter day. The overhead sky was bright blue, though we could see clouds just beginning to form to the south. I was amazed at the warmth I felt in the sunshine as I did the animal chores, though it was still chilly when I stepped into the shade. 

Chores done, Greg and I decided to go for walk up the creek, not along the road, but down in the rock bed. We stepped from stone to stone, playing the ever so invigorating game of creek valley hopscotch. To our right, the wide central channel was still filled with several feet of clear flowing water.

I looked up from my rocky footsteps to see Greg pointing upstream toward a wooden object lying high and dry on the gray creek stones. It appeared to be a small table. We made our way over to it, and Greg picked it up. It was a curious table indeed. It had short legs, so it would stand no more than a few inches tall, and its top surface was perhaps the size of a small end table. We turned it over, wondering at the use of such a low-lying piece of furniture. We lay it back down among the rocks where we found it and continued on our way.

Again, Greg spied something farther up the creek, a long wooden box-like thing. It appeared to be charred at one end. We made our way across the rocks, and looking down, we knew right away what we had found. It was a wooden organ pipe, about three feet long, its top end burnt so that only charred wood remained. It had certainly once been far longer. A pencil marking was still visible, right over the window. It said G#. I imagined it proudly standing in rank alongside other wooden pipes in a country church, and it suddenly occurred to me what the purpose of the odd low table might have been. Perhaps it had been the foot stool on which a church organist had once placed their feet.

Greg held the wooden pipe in his hands and turned it over. Two slotted screws held a dark square of wood that covered the lower whistle end of the pipe. Greg looked carefully at the screws, knowing that old screws, like old nails, can tell the tale of manufacture. They were clearly machine made, gimlet screws, having a pointed shaft, but the fact that they only had one slot across their heads, and were not crossed Phillips head screws, meant that the organ pipe likely dated to sometime before the 1930s, when the Phillips screw came into use. My imagination took fight.

A small country church stood on the outskirts of a small country town. The town was so small that every member of the congregation knew every other member, except for one, the little gray church mouse who lived in the wall beside the organ. This was an industrious little mouse. For weeks, he had been hard at work, nibbling away at the thick cloth-wrapped wires that ran through the church's plaster walls. 

Early one morning, after a hard night of nibbling, he was curled up sound asleep in his nest, when the bare wires touched and began to spark. The sparks grew in frequency and soon ignited the wooden lath that held the plaster. Flames swept up inside the wall, finally breaking through near the ceiling, where they gladly jumped over to the church organ's wooden pipes.

The town’s people noticed the smoke as it began to spill from the church's windows, and they gathered to watch while the volunteer fire department rushed over to put out the flames. Little did anyone know, but the sleeping church mouse had been awakened by all the commotion, and had scampered from his home in the wall, down to the church's stone foundation. There, he looked out across the field at the neighboring farmer's house on the far side. He thought that perhaps this would be a good time to leave the church and become a house mouse.

The fire was extinguished, but the flames had damaged the organ's wooden pipes beyond repair. It just so happened that the farmer across the field owned a backhoe, and he drove that backhoe over to the church and dug a hole down by the creek. There he buried the organ's charred pipes, as well as the water damaged foot stool.

Insurance money paid for the cost of new organ pipes, and the little gray mouse easily transitioned into his new life as a house mouse, and then, many years later, the rain swollen creek overflowed its banks, and washed away the soft soil surrounding the buried pipes. The rushing water carried G# and the organ stool downstream until its water subsided, and dropped the wooden pieces here in the creek valley where Greg and I found them.

I can only imagine the true story, and perhaps, dear reader, you might be able to shed some light on it, but what I do know is that I treasure G#. I will lovingly coat it with clear resin, charred wood and all, and imagine its story for a long time to come.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in Ohio south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.

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