As for favorite stories: I recommend that you long-time AMICA members
look up in your waaay back issues of the "AMICA Bulletin" a two-part
series titled "The Making Of An AMICAN," written by Daniel L. Schacher.
I have the honor to be the author's son.  Dad was an electrical
engineer by trade, engineer and mathematician by education.  By hobby
he was a piano tuner (in spite of being tone deaf; he used a Strobocon
that he rebuilt!) and restorer, player piano restorer, watchmaker,
machinist, carpenter, plumber, electrician, and bicycle mechanic.

I'll have to borrow my mother's copies and scan them, so that they can
be posted online.  Basically this is the story.  Dad was out one day in
1966 renewing his out-of-town library card at the Paterson, N.J., Pub-
lic Library.  While browsing the shelves, he came across a copy of a
book titled "Rebuilding The Player Piano."  That was it; he devoured
the contents.  Later that year, when my mother asked him what he wanted
for his birthday, he mentioned the book that he'd read, and that it
didn't sound that hard, and could we get a player piano for him to
rebuild?

Heh.  From then on, he restored four player pianos and was working on a
fifth at the time of his death.  When the first piano was completed, it
was the day of my sister Sue's Sweet Sixteen party.  Dad had gotten a
dozen rolls with the old pumper, and Sue and her friends played those
same twelve rolls over and over -- and over! -- until a neighbor phoned
us somewhere around midnight and said, "Dan, for Christ's sake, give
them some new rolls or ask them to stop!"  The neighborhood was single
family houses on 75'x 100' lots, and the piano room basically was all
windows on three sides.  So you could hear that piano quite well
outside!  As I recall, Dad later put some sheets of soundproofing
material across the back of the piano so as not to annoy our neighbors
so much.  We were friends with them all, and wanted to stay that way.

I'm not sure, but I think I remember that one of the rolls was a QRS
roll, "I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover."  I remember when I was in
high school we staged "The Music Man," and we needed a player piano for
a prop.  Yup, we had our Stroud Duo-Art upright trucked to Montclair
for the scene with the player piano.  We got quite a few more rolls
over the years, somewhere around 2500, I think.

Lots of good memories.  I'll have to type up some more later.

Ross Schacher
Marlboro, MA