By Brandon Macz
Moscow Pullman Daily News staff writer
July 17, 2010
Moscow Pullman Daily News staff writer
July 17, 2010
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, well, that could change if John Elwood gets his hands on it.
For the mayor of Elberton, which no longer exists as a true municipality, piano tuning and repair is the 58-year-old's livelihood - aside from his other love, his wife, Sally Burkhart.
But his proudest work is his restoration of the Latah County Historical Society's antique melodeon - a reed organ with a foot-operated bellows and piano keyboard - which had ceased playing. It was suggested that restoring the melodeon would be a perfect tribute to the memory of Agnes Kottke, a historical society volunteer who died last year at the age of 97.
"She was a friend of ours," Elwood said. "At her memorial, there was a suggestion that if you wanted to donate something in her memory, that (a melodeon) was a good suggestion. It just seemed like the perfect way to memorialize Agnes' contribution (to the society)."
Kottke's daughter, Dorothy Wahl, said her mother always loved music and volunteering time at the historical society.
When Kottke was 20, she purchased a piano in 1932 for $50 after doing housekeeping, babysitting and "anything she could to earn enough money to buy that piano," Wahl said. She played it her entire life. Wahl still has the piano, and wonders if the historical society might want it.
"I think that melodeon, it was just a kindness that John was going to do as a memory of mom," Wahl said. "She would have been in favor of anything that promoted music appreciation. It just seemed very fitting for her. I think it's wonderful. (John's) the one who tunes our piano. He's a good, good friend. He's very nice, a very kind man. He's always doing good things."
Elwood - who had a passion for building and acquiring various musical instruments his entire adult life - developed a soft spot for the instrument.
"It became a beloved part of the family," he said, adding working on the melodeon involved balancing functionality with historical preservation. "I didn't want to destroy evidence of what had been done before. I just wanted to make it work without changing the way it looked."
The source of the melodeon's muted state turned out to be a ruptured bellows cloth, which is rubberized and contracts like a fireplace bellows, Elwood said.
"If you could hold it up to the light, you'd just see light go through it," he said, adding there was more that needed to be done to the melodeon and "parts of it were difficult for sure," especially considering Elwood manufactured the majority of the parts himself from his workshop inside his home using mostly hand tools.
He said he does use power tools, but mainly just to take raw pieces of wood down to a size he can handle by hand. Elwood gladly accepts wood where he can get it and takes special note when wind is high and might fall a tree.
"Very often the situation is 'We've got this tree down, do you want it,' " he said.
Finding readily available parts for the melodeon, built in 1866, didn't seem like a viable option when he began the restoration.
Ruby Canfield Wheeler donated her parents' melodeon to the historical society more than 10 years ago, according to Ann Catt, curator for the Latah County Historical Society. Homer and Rhoda Canfield were Harvard homesteaders who used the melodeon to entertain guests and host dances at their home or the homes of friends, since the melodeon had folding legs, Catt said. It made a number of trips by wagon in the 1890s and early 1900s to Princeton, Palouse and Garfield.
Elwood said he would have liked "to have been a fly on the wall" in the melodeon's heyday.
"The historical significance of this instrument is it was used, it was used, it was used," he said. "It was used to the ground. They danced to that little organ a lot."
Latah County's historical society is no different than any other in its committal to documenting the history of people, places and objects, and Elwood said he hopes to be able to package photos he took of his restoration effort with descriptions about his work to accompany the melodeon - it would also offer some insight to whoever might have to restore the instrument in the future.
"There are a lot of things that school kids could really like about this," Elwood said of documenting his work.
"It outweighs everything else I've done (at the historical society) a great deal." And it was particularly gratifying to know the Latah County Historical Society was confident he could do the job, he added. "They just trusted me to do it, to do it right. You never know what you'll run into."
Since pumping air from the bellows through the reeds in the melodeon is necessary to keep the sound, Elwood said "there's something that gets blurry about the sound very quickly."
Elwood pumped new life into the melodeon from inside the McConnell Mansion in Moscow on Wednesday during a social gathering hosted by the Latah County Historical Society that included representatives from the Idaho State Historical Society. Catt said a fall recital will be held to showcase the melodeon to the public. The ivory keys - four times as heavy as contemporary keys - fell and rose as Elwood played and sang with his wife. He said he planned to play the song, "The Mysterious Barricades," because it "would invite the audience to sing."
PHOTO CAPTIONS: John Elwood looks over hand tools he uses as a piano tuner and craftsman from inside his workshop at his home in Elberton, Wash. on Tuesday. John Elwood plays a melodeon and sings, accompanied by his wife, Sally Burkhart, at a social gathering at the McConnell Mansion in Moscow on Wednesday.
