My first mechanical musical instrument was a large Cable Nelson
Dulcitone upright player piano.  It contained a Simplex action.
The year was 1947 and I was eleven years old.  The piano was for sale
($20.00) and located in the garage of a neighbor.

I saved my allowance of 50 cents a week, mowed lawns and helped a lady
with laundry until I had $20.00 to buy the piano.  Since there were no
funds to hire professional movers, I gathered my friends, about ten of
us, and we managed to push the piano from its location, down the
sidewalk, into our driveway and into my parent's garage.  It remained
there for about two years.

Unfortunately there were only two rolls with the piano: "Spring Time
In The Rockies" and "In a Little Spanish Town".  Still, I thought it
was the greatest thing in the world.  Every day before and after school,
and weekends, my friends would gather in our garage.  We played the two
rolls over and over, singing the words printed on them.  We played them
so many times that my mother said if she heard those tunes again she
would hide the rolls and I would never see them again.  Eventually the
rolls disappeared, and I never found them until we moved to another home.

During the early years, I discovered a couple of thrift shops in
downtown Rochester, New York.  Both had a large supply of used piano
rolls, priced three for 25 cents!  (This included Ampico, Duo-Art and
Welte rolls mixed in with standard player rolls.)  Bargain priced,
I thought.  I did not know what a reproducing roll was until a few
years later (that is another story).  Needless to say, I was on the bus
and downtown every Saturday morning with my 25 cents, and back home to
play my wonderful treasures.

Slowly the piano became more difficult to pump and eventually some
of the notes were not playing at all.  Being a curious boy and always
interested in mechanics, I decided to take the piano apart and find the
cause.  It was then I discovered the air motor and pneumatics had
deteriorated and were full of holes.

At first I did not know what to do, but I knew of an elderly man who
lived at the end of our street.  He had worked at the Ampico factory
and was very knowledgeable about players.  He told me of the days when
he worked at "The Piano Works" (that is what they called the Ampico
factory in those days) and he offered to teach me how to recover the
pneumatics.  Because my piano contained a Simplex player action, the
job was not too difficult.  I ordered some pneumatic cloth from a piano
supply house and began recovering the pneumatics.

My parents were not very optimistic and doubted my ability, telling
me that I was wasting my time and the player could never be repaired
(at least not by a 12-year-old).  However, I was not easily influenced
and refused to give up.  At that time the valves and pumping bellows
were good enough to work satisfactorily without being restored.  When
I finished recovering the pneumatics, I was delighted to find my
wonderful player piano was producing music again.  My parents were
amazed.  They agreed to have the piano moved into our house, where it
was played daily and remained for over a decade.

Having a great interest in players, I started working on other players
in the neighborhood.  Later I started buying old players and tinkering
with them enough to get them working and selling them at a modest
profit.  I saved the profits, and eventually traded in my old player
and bought a Fischer model B Ampico.  I kept the Fischer Ampico about
twenty years.  I reluctantly sold it in the 1970's after moving to
smaller quarters and remained piano-less until 1994.

In 1994, a friend telephoned in regard to selling his late father's
player piano.  Upon questioning him, I had a feeling "his father's old
player piano" was an Ampico.  I drove a great distance to their summer
home to inspect the player.  Indeed, it was a Baby Ampico (top loader).
The motor was missing and it had not been used in many years.  I did
my best to convince him to keep the piano and I would restore it, but
he would have no part of it.  To him, it was just an old player and he
had one thing on his mind: he wanted to get rid of it!  I purchased it,
restored it, and it presently resides in my living room.

Bruce Clark