Job 4: Moving on up
Every so often, I was taken along on piano moves. Piano moving was the cream of the crop job for Complete Piano Service. You'd spend most of the day driving in a van all over the tri-state area smoking weed and listing to worn out Led Zeppelin cassettes. After reaching a destination, a piano is either pulled off the trailer and leveraged into a house somewhere, or one was pulled out of a house and placed on the trailer. Seeing as I was the smallest and most inexperienced, I was the guy who carried the dolly. I would spend most of my time standing around waiting for them to tip a grand piano in a certain way so I could place a dolly under it. Most often I wouldn't be paying attention, and a mover would yell, "hey dumb fuck, pull your head out of your ass and set up the fucking dolly." Smoking pot all day really didn't help the situation. The movers generally consisted of me, my older brother Matt, Kenny, and his older brother Bruce.
We spent a lot of time in the piano van, and covered a lot of ground. Fortunately, the van was always equipped with an abundance of kazoos. My brother and all the Maguire boys had played a brass instrument of some kind in school, so they were versed in most Chicago songs, or any stupid theme song that you would normally here bellowing out of a highschool auditorium on band night. After boredom would set in, my brother and Bruce would start the musical entertainment.
bzzratt...
In the park
bzzratt...
I think it was the fourth of July...
After they had worked through their Chicago repertoire, they would inevitably move to the Jetson's theme song. There's really nothing more beautiful than the theme from M.A.S.H belted out on kazoos.
They prided themselves on the ability to find the quickest route anywhere. They had heaps of map books, and their knowledge of the tri-state area was astounding. Every once in a while they would throw a map book at me, and say something like, "How do we get to the BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway) from here." I would panic. It was usually after we had just huffed a fatty, and I was intently staring at Bruce's hair, which was a big curly afro that bounced up and down when the van went over a bump. I wouldn't know where we were, which way was north, or even what stinking borough we were in. My brother would inevitably take the map book from me, and we would all sit in silence.
I didn't get to go on moves that often, and I was damn tired of polishing brass, so I left Complete Piano Service. My brother still moves pianos in New York, and his ability to make it across town during rush hour with minimal delay is astounding.
