-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD --

To one and all of you who replied, both with offers to provide some
and with instructions how to obtain the product, goes a very heartfelt
"thank you!"

Apparently Garfield Pin Block Restorer has always been distributed by
Schaff Piano Supply for as far back as anyone can remember. I'm going to
try my luck at going that route plus try to get one of their catalogs
with my grandfather's product listed in it.

I noted with some concern that Schaff's web page indicates they are
wholesale only and they deal only with members of the craft.  However,
their web site was not extremely well protected from a password
standpoint in that with only a couple of tries I was able to log on.

On Monday I will attempt to place an order for a bottle of the stuff
and see if they'd be willing to send a catalog.  If they balk at
honoring my order I will return to the MMD group for a tiny bit more
of your hospitality.

Yes, my father was indeed an osteopath!  This is notable in that he
went on to become one of the first Osteopathic Physicians in the state
of Illinois to become licensed to practice internal medicine, and
switched disciplines in the late 1950s.  Not many doctors do that.

For the benefit of those of you who weren't privy to my e-mail
exchange with Bob Taylor, he mentioned that the Schaff supply catalog
indicated that GPBR was "developed by William M. Garfield after some
40 years in the trade".

Well, yes, he was the inventor all right, but no, he wasn't a piano
tuner.  It was his neighbor who provided the piano craft expertise,
and for whom grandpa Willy stirred some stuff together to help his
neighbor-friend do a better job repairing pianos.  It was also the
neighbor who pushed Willy into getting a patent and it was the neighbor
who introduced the concoction to the piano trade.

William M. Garfield was in fact a chemist and former major league
baseball pitcher for a team in San Francisco that went on to become the
Pittsburgh Pirates.  Grandpa Willy pitched only one season in the late
1800s before a serious shoulder injury put him out of the game.  He
went on to pursue a career in chemistry and stayed in close contact
with his dear friend and neighbor (whose name we've so far been unable
to track down; too many of the oldsters have passed on).

As the story goes, Willy's son (my dad, Harold Garfield) learned to
play the piano over at his piano-repairing neighbor's home and became
quite accomplished.  He helped put himself through Kirksville Osteo-
pathic college in the early 1920s by playing the piano in a band he
formed called "The Missouri 5".

Years later Willy gave my father a lovely mahogany Chickering & Sons
baby grand (model 500 as I recall) that he and his neighbor had
purchased for pennies on the dollar as 'severely damaged salvage' from
a moving company and performed complete repairs to, putting it back to
"as new" condition.  The Chickering still sits in the living room of my
mother's home in Illinois.  She celebrated her 86th birthday today.
Dad died in 1964 and grandpa Willy died in 1945, a year before I was
born.

Apologies for boring everyone with this, but sometimes it's interesting
to hear some of the history behind a product.

Thanks again.
William D. "Bill" Garfield
Houston, Texas