Grandma Rachel’s player piano

At Grandma Rachel’s house, the player piano was usually off-limits. But when an ice storm knocked out the power, we gathered under her quilts, lit the

My great-grandmother, Grandma Rachel, liked things just so.

Her house was always clean and carefully put together right down to the white carpet. To a kid, there was plenty to look at and be fascinated by. There just wasn’t necessarily much you were supposed to touch.

Especially the player piano. That piano captivated us. But like a lot of things at Grandma Rachel’s house admiration was generally best done from a safe distance.

Then the electricity would go out. An ice storm could leave a rural house without power for hours or sometimes longer, and suddenly the rules changed. Out came the oil lamps and candles. We piled under quilts, some of them made by Rachel herself. Board games appeared. If there was enough light, we read books. And we got to play the piano.

It didn’t need electricity. We pumped the pedals with our feet and that old player piano came alive, making music in a house where almost everything else had suddenly gone quiet. I don’t remember rooting for the electricity to stay off. But I wouldn’t put it past us.

I’ve been thinking about Grandma Rachel lately as I drive rural highways and see electric crews working on the lines. New poles are going up. Old equipment is being replaced. Mile after mile, somebody is doing the work now that we hope will matter when the ice comes later.

October is National Co-op Month, which seems like a good time to notice them. We don’t spend much time admiring electric poles. When they’re doing their job, we hardly see them. It’s when they’re snapped, leaning or covered in ice that they suddenly become the most important thing along the highway.

Our preparations have changed, too. Today, plenty of rural homes have generators ready for an outage. We have battery-powered lights and phones that can tell us how long the storm will last — at least until their batteries run down.

Rachel’s generation had oil lamps and quilts. And a player piano.

Maybe that’s why those line crews have caught my attention. There is something familiar about what they’re doing. Long before the forecast calls for freezing rain, they’re preparing for it. Strengthening things now against a cold night that hasn’t arrived yet.

Rachel understood that kind of preparation. A quilt wasn’t made the night the electricity went out. It was stitched long before anybody needed it. The oil lamps were already there. And the old piano stood waiting in the corner, although I’m fairly certain entertaining great-grandchildren during a power outage wasn’t the reason she’d kept it.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember those outages primarily for being cold or dark. I remember being under Rachel’s quilts. I remember the lamps. And I remember little feet pumping those pedals until music filled Grandma Rachel’s immaculate house.

Someday this winter, ice may cover the trees and wires again. If it does, I’ll be grateful for generators and stronger poles and the men and women of the electric co-ops who prepared for that storm months before the first drop of freezing rain fell.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I suspect I’ll also hear an old player piano. And I’ll think of Grandma Rachel, who kept a house where children weren’t supposed to touch much of anything. Unless, of course, the electricity went out.