The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
The Pipe Organ and The Accident
One of Dave’s patent office friend’s relatives sold and installed pipe organs. He had plans to install a new Schlicker organ in the Agnes Scott Women’s College in Atlanta, Georgia around 1969, and the old Austin organ in the college was going to be junked. It ended up that Dave bought it for very little, and he went to Georgia and dismantled the Austin and loaded it and the metal and wooden pipes into a U-Haul truck, and loaded the very heavy blowers into Dave’s Scout truck.
He drove behind the truck on the way home, and in North Carolina, while stopped in a construction zone, a semi tractor-trailer truck came up behind him and when it braked, a loose wheel came off its trailer, hit the back of Dave’s trailer, flew up in the air and crashed down onto the cab part of Dave’s Scout, caving in the roof and knocking him unconscious. The U-Haul driver wasn’t aware of what was happening until the Scout rolled into the back of his truck.
Dave has only vague recollections about any of this; he woke up at Duke University Medical Center, and a policeman was waiting in the room and he told Dave what had happened, and he needed Dave’s identification, address, and other info.
Dave was kept in the hospital until evening and by then he insisted on being released so he could drive home that night, although he was hurting badly.
Weeks later, when he was having trouble with paresthesias and neck pain, X-rays showed a broken vertebra. Dave says (wryly), “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” because it disabled him to the point that he was able to retire early from the Patent Office and do what he wanted to do, for the rest of his life.
Now, 2001, the organ bench, and a few very small, pretty pipes are all that’s left of this big adventure.
So many other time-consuming projects entered our lives since that trip that the organ never was rebuilt. The bench, considerably higher than piano benches, is now the perfect “table” for my Kurzweil Keyboard in the big room; it’s the right size and has a handy shelf for storing music.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee (1931 – 2024) built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
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