The Feral Organ
A rain-warped Baptist church in rural Appalachian Kentucky at 3:30 PM on a Thursday, where a 1,900-pound pipe organ that hasn't been tuned since 1987 is groaning faintly in the wind despite every window being shut.
The county historical society has offered $14,000 to relocate the organ to a museum — but the movers need an answer by 5 PM today because their flatbed is already en route to another job in Knoxville. The problem: the organ is bolted to a choir loft floor that a structural engineer flagged as 'load-bearing, probably' in a report from 2011, and three of the hand-carved cherrywood facade pipes have been identified by a retired Oberlin professor as likely the work of Henry Erben, which would make them worth six figures individually — if they survive removal. The church board president just handed Double a cordless drill and said 'your call.'
“Henry Erben pipes sitting in a church that's one bad storm away from being a pile! We're not losing these to gravity — we're losing them to cowardice.”
“The structural report literally says 'probably,' and you're holding a Black & Decker like it's Excalibur.”
Double yanked every bolt out in 43 minutes flat, and the choir loft held — barely — though one floor joist let out a crack loud enough to send the movers sprinting for the parking lot. The Erben pipes made it onto the flatbed without a scratch, and the retired Oberlin professor wept openly when she authenticated all three at a combined appraisal of $340,000.
That joist wasn't cracking, it was applauding.
I aged nine years in that building and I'm supposed to be happy about cherrywood.