This past weekend was my first band organ rally, sponsored by the
Mid-America Chapter of the MBSI.  Sandusky is an ideal town for such an
event, having a beautifully landscaped grass park extending for three
blocks right in the downtown business section, about two blocks from Lake
Erie's cooling breezes.  The Merry-Go-Round Museum at one end made an
appropriate headquarters for the event.

We covered that park with trailered band and fairground organs of all
sizes, and those of us with "monkey" crank organs found cones of silence
in the sound-shadows of the big organs where we could entertain the
public too.

I found that a hand-cranked organ on a cart attracts just as many people
as a big fairground machine -- folks are attracted by the human element
of it (our bodies doing a sort of hula as the crank goes around) and the
thought that they too could own a small organ.  Besides, I could stop
cranking and talk, and give the kids a turn at the crank.  (I took a turn
at a modern Pierement on its big iron flywheel -- ended up watching the
last few pages of its folding book like a hungry hawk :-)

The two most frequently asked questions were:

Q1:  Where's your monkey?
A1:  I only need him to take the money; we're doing this for fun.

Q2:  Did you build this yourself?
A2:  I wish!

But there were at least four home-built large organs there.  Two, "Trudy"
and "The Spirit of San Diego" had been built from scratch to unique fully
chromatic scales by their owners, who had also made the dynamite musical
arrangements and punched the rolls themselves!  Both organs were
fantastic in workmanship and sound.

Someone else had scratch-built a Wurlitzer reproduction, making all the
pipes.  It was one of the better sounding W's there, but I still like
Mary Pollock's 125 with the gooseneck brass trumpets.

One small scratch-built was playing well, but was dreadfully in need of
a tuning.  I didn't see any home-brew grind organs.

European organs were fairly well represented, including two in-your-face
Bruders.  Special mention goes to the finest looking and sounding organ
there, the 92-key Steenput/Verbeeck belonging to the Krughoffs.  Its seven
facade figures included a director, four bell ringers, and two cherubs
who put their horns to their lips whenever a reed or brass register came
on.  The sound lived up to the show, with subtle variety rather than
sheer power.

As I'd expected, it was a great time to compare the various makes and
models of both large organs and the many makes of contemporary grind
organs.  I got to compare my 11-year-old Raffin 31/84 with a nearly
identical newer model, and trade tuning and maintenance hints after its
owner found that mine cranked easier than his.  For hand-crankers, the
Raffins still give a lot of good music for the size and cost.

I made some new friends and was discovered by an old high school
acquaintance, the wife of a collector in Maryland.  Or maybe I should
say she was the collector -- seems the heavy hitters are husband-wife
teams.  "After my wife heard that Gavioli, we just had to get it," etc.

Oh well, at least my wife doesn't make me take the Raffin to the
streets and earn money to justify it.  But I *am* looking for a
stuffed toy monkey.

Mike Knudsen

"Old organ grinders never die -- they just get cranky!"