Mama Kat Thursday: Grandma's Piano

For Mama Kat Thursday, I'm going to do a series on "Memories from Grandma's House," highlighting some of my more amusing memories of visiting my Mom's Mother, whom we called, "Grandma Robbins."

(Since we had two grandma's, we identified them by last name.)

This was Grandma's Robbin's house in Mantorville, Minnesota.
It's the house Mother grew up in, her and her 6 other siblings. 

This how it looks now. (photo from Google Earth.) 
But back in the 60's, it still had white wood siding, old fashioned ceiling to floor glass windows, lots more green shrubs close to the house and more trees in the yard plus an old barn on the other side that served as a garage with a big garden next to it. 

It was a huge house, old in the 60's when we were visiting.
Downstairs had a kitchen with a bedroom behind it that Grandma and Grandpa used, a bathroom, a informal dining-family room with a wood stove, a large formal living room with a another wood-burning furnace in it and a formal dining room on the other side of the staircase.
The stairs led up to 4 bedrooms, but today's story is about Grandma's piano.

Now my sisters and I lived in Indiana. Visiting Grandma Robbins was a once-a-year vacation event. We didn't have a piano at our house nor did we know how to play any instrument.

So we'd go to Grandma's house and she had one of those classic dark-colored upright pianos in her formal living room.
Both Grandma's had a piano, because having a piano used to be a must-have American homes. People once had pianos the way we have TV's now. Even my Hoosier grade school during the 60's had upright pianos in every ground floor classroom and the teachers all knew how to play and would lead us in group sing-alongs.

So, it wasn't like we'd never seen a piano.

It's just Grandma didn't have television, so finding something to do was a challenge and that piano was something to do. Inevitably, every year, we'd all 3 wiggle onto the piano bench and start pounding happily away and just as inevitably, Grandma or someone would come to the doorway and tell us to go find something else to do.

Even so, I can't remember a year we didn't plunk away on it at least once. It was just a too attractive novelty not to.

I do recall that Grandma would sometimes show us how a piano ought to be played and would play and sing hymns, since played for her church every Sunday.

Thanks for Visiting!