A pipe dream realized

The pipe organ gets its sound by driving air through the organ from a keyboard. Each pipe produces a different pitch, and the air is moved through the instrument with a foot pedal. The pipes are in rows called ranks, and the instrument has one or more keyboards played by the hands and as well as a keyboard, called a pedal clavier, played by the feet.

Because of the continuous flow of air, an organ is able to sustain notes for as long as keys are pressed, something impossible for a piano.

This, combined with its massive pipes — which can sometimes fill the entire wall of a building — are what give the pipe organ its gigantic sound. The smallest portable pipe organs can have two dozen pipes with the largest organs boasting over 30,000.

The original pipe organs were built in the third century BC by the Greeks. It’s the oldest instrument still used in European classic music that is derived from Greece.

The pipe organ first began appearing in churches around 900 A.D. By the 1400s, they were established in cathedrals across Europe, used for festivals, church services and for choirs.

And now, thanks to a little luck and a lot of effort, Bruce has a pipe organ sitting in his den.

“I bought this organ from a gentleman named Hank Humphries, and it was located in Danville, Virginia,” Bruce says. “I’ve always wanted a pipe organ, and I didn’t think I would ever find one that I could afford. But I was searching online one night, and this guy wanted $2,000 for it. So I started emailing him back and forth, and I decided I would buy it.”

But then Bruce had to figure out how to get it from Virginia to Arkansas.

The organ, a Kilgen Petite Ensemble, was built in 1948 by the Kilgen Organ Company for the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Anniston, Alabama. In 1965, it was purchased by someone named David Anderson, a junior in high school and the son of a preacher. Anderson allegedly spent 18 months rebuilding the organ and installed it in his garage in his home.

Eventually, it ended up with Humphries who installed it for his wife. The instrument has 244 pipes, some made from metal and some made of sugar pine. Those pipes fit into an enclosed case, which Bruce said likely weighs more than 500 pounds alone.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t going to be easy to move. Bruce said he enlisted the help of one of his friends, Michael Robbins, an attorney in Russellville.

“I hollered at him and said, ‘How would you like to take a little road trip,’ and he said, ‘Dude, I love road trips. Where are we going?’”

Bruce laughs at the memory. “I sort of roped him into that.”

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“If you ever hear a huge pipe organ, it will shake your soul.”

The two left Dover and dismantled the organ, but getting it out of Humphries’ house was no simple maneuver. “So we were able to get it on dollies,” Bruce says. “and his [Humphries] idea was to take it out the back of his house and off a deck that was, like, eight feet off the ground. He wanted to put it in a truck then drive it around the house to the U-Haul. When I saw that I said, ‘We can’t do this. We got to have help.”

Bruce says Humphries knew some firefighters who had a moving business on the side, so the pair agreed to split the cost of hiring them.

“That was the only way we were going to be able to do it,” Bruce says. “These guys show up, and one of these guys, I swear to God, his arms were as big around as my waist. These three guys got ahold of this thing and picked it up and lifted it down into the truck. It took them like 15 minutes to have it loaded up. I think they charged us $350.”

Now the pipe organ is in Bruce’s house. And it’s loud enough to wake the neighbors.

Bruce says he plays it two or three times per week, hymns mostly.

“I don’t have any favorite songs because I like so many pieces,” he says. “I’m not an organist by trade. I’m a pianist. An organ is a lot different than a piano. Usually, I will play hymns. I love to play hymns. A lot of the old Lutheran hymns are wonderful. I don’t do any of that Phantom of the Opera stuff. I’m not into that, and I’m not good enough.” l

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Christmas Tree Oh

Story by BENITA DREW

HOW LOVELY ARE THY BRANCHES drenched in store-bought silver-strand icicles, covered in kid-craft construction paper ornaments loaded with glitter and homemade knitted angels from years past with a cockeyed star perched precariously on top.

While many of us have traditions we’ve let slide through the years, the one I miss the most is the Christmas tree search. I don’t mean for the store-bought tree in a box that can be erected the day after Halloween with no repercussions (what happened to turkey and football day?). I don’t even mean for the perfectly shapedfrom-years-of-trimming-and-irrigation tree picked from rows of other perfect trees spaced evenly apart.

I mean THE tree.

Every year of my youth, Dad took on one key Christmas duty: obtaining the tree with my sisters and me. One week before Christmas, or thereabouts, we’d load up in his old Ford, chainsaw in back, and set off to a nearby piece of property. Sometimes it was a family member’s or friend’s forested property, sometimes our own.

We’d pull up, jump out of the truck eager to find that perfect tree, and take off. Sometimes Dad had been eyeballing that tree all year, waiting for the perfect time to harvest it — just enough time to keep it green(ish) until Christmas day. But he’d still let us wander around in case we found a better one.

Invariably, the ones in the fence rows looked the best but were the most disappointing once out of the fence. The trees were deceptively tall, while they were outside, as well. Dad would stand beside them, arm stretched skyward, and give us a lesson every year about ceiling heights. How many five-year-olds know that the standard ceiling is eight feet tall? Usually, we’d wander around and just couldn’t find a more perfect tree, so the 11-foot tree went home with us. Eight feet of it went inside and the rest to the burn pile. One year, Dad had had a rough day at the farm but he’d already said he’d take me out to get the tree. I was eight or so and full of energy and excitement. Years later looking back, I realized his intent when he gave me the chore of carrying the chainsaw: to make it a shorter trip. This was no small task. Dad believed in owning the largest piece of equipment he could get so it’d do any job he might run across. But I was determined to make Dad proud by carrying the chainsaw without complaint or visible struggle. It was an extra-long trek through the woods that year. Guess his plan backfired, but he was proud. Once the tree was home, a bucket was cleaned out and large-enough rocks located to fill the space around the tree in the bucket. The tree was then placed in the house always against the wall. For one, we didn’t have space for a tree in the middle of a room but, also, there was inevitably a bare side to the tree that needed to be hidden.