The music side of the recession
Recessions aren’t all bad. My daughter, Annie, who a few years ago felt she had been priced out of the housing market in our area, finds herself priced right back in with the market value of homes plunging. And my wife, Lenie, who has been the volunteer accompanist for the Gold Beach High School and grammar school choirs for the past two years, has discovered that the price of used baby grand pianos has fallen to the point where she can afford to buy one.
Lenie has been practicing on her small spinet upright, which has been in her family since she was eight years old. It’s a good piano, but she really coveted a baby grand for its more luxurious sound. Thanks to the efforts of Dorothy Ainsworth, one of BHM’s key writers, and her son, Eric, an accomplished pianist, we located a 25-year-old baby grand Yamaha at the Piano Studios and Showcase in Medford, Oregon. Eric played every piano in the store to determine the Yamaha was a good buy, roughly half the cost of what it would sell for prior to the recession.
Tom Lowell, the store’s owner and a writer on the side, clinched the deal when he offered to write BHM an article about how he built a road into his homestead. I find it difficult to pass up a good story on a useful topic. Eric borrowed Tom’s truck and moved the baby grand the 150 miles to our home near Gold Beach yesterday.
Lenie played the whole evening.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
That’s one of the things I really don’t get. The market is correcting and government is trying to prop up the high prices. Why is government trying to prevent prices of homes falling to where poor and middle class people can afford them? Why does government hate poor people?
Maybe because then they won’t “need” government to “help” them? I dunno.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
love this picture…a beautiful piano and a very joyful smile!!
February 19th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Lenie looks beautiful sitting at the piano. Dave, you are a lucky man to have such a wife! Enjoy! Glad Annie is finding good prices on real estate – will continue to pray for her and Eric about all of this…
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:05 pm
such wonderful hair!!!
February 24th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Awwww Lenie!!! I’m so happy for ya! Our oldest daughter plays the piano too… went to college for 4 1/2 years… studied her butt off, paid for the whole college ride herself, and got straight A’s… and when she landed herself a good job, she bought a beautiful, used, black Yamaha grand piano. The first words out of her mouth were… “This is what I went to college for, Mom!” She, too, was in the store for hours, playing her potential new purchase, before actually buying it. It had to be “just right”.
When she was little, we had a very OLD upright cabinet grand that she learned on. Her music teacher was shocked she stayed motivated using such a dilapidated piano.
But that girl loved that piano so much and used to write love letters to it and put them in the bench! 
There’s no minimizing the love between a musician and their instrument. I’m glad you’ve finally found the love of your life…. next to Dave, of course! *heh*