A New Member of the Family

   Several months ago I got a message from a woman from church. Her husband's job required them to relocate to Texas. She was going through their belongings to find things that they would not need to bring with them. One of those items was an autoharp. She was wondering, since we are musical, would we want it? Of course we would take it. It didn't matter that neither C nor I really knew how to play an autoharp. All I knew was that an instrument was about to be orphaned. We needed to take it in and give it a good home.
   We picked it up on a warm day. I was worried because it had been outside and we had had some rain.  It did not have a case. It was in a reusable shopping bag along with an instruction book and a tuning wrench. We brought it home and put it in the instrument room. For a long time it sat in the bag until we did some reorganization. Then we took it out of the bag and looked it over. It was dusty. I cleaned it off the best I could and lightly strummed it. It was horribly out of tune. However I didn't have time to take care of it and neither did C.
  The poor thing sat quietly off to the side until last week. I decided that the harps needed tuning and the autoharp needed to be tuned as well. Fortunately for me, Margaret and Eve, my two harps, were in fairy good tune. Then I took out the autoharp. I was grateful that the tuning for each string was printed on the instrument next to the correct tuning peg. It should be easy, so I thought. I started with the lowest string and immediately ran into a problem. The tuner I use does not register tones as low as the lower register of the autoharp. C took over and started with the higher strings. After watching him for three strings I took over.
  Tuning is a job that I dislike. The worst part is when I can't get the string where I want it. I either turn it too much and wind up sharp or too little and wind up flat. It never goes just to the right spot. It seemed to take forever to tune one string. The other challenge was that I was using a guitar pick to strum the string. it was a little too big so I kept hitting nearby strings which confused the electronic tuner. Finally I just used my finger. I knew it was going to hurt. The strings are steel strings and I don't have any callouses on my fingers anymore. I kept plugging away at it. I was going to get it tuned. Eventually I got to the lower strings. I could have tuned them to the strings that I already tuned except that required relative pitch. I can't tune that way. C suggested using his Snark tuner. We couldn't clip the Snark onto the autoharp so I laid it on top of the chord bars. It worked. I was able to tune the rest of the strings.
   I was relieved. My finger hurt and there was a small blister on it where I had plucked the strings. I took a can of air and used it to blow the dust off underneath the chord bars. Then I pressed each bar down and strummed with strings with the pick. It sounded pretty good. It was definitely going to need some new strings, but that could wait. We would have to find a place that did that kind of work first.
   There was one last thing that needed to be done. The autoharp needed a name. We didn't need to name it. We only have one autoharp, unlike the harps and guitars where we have several. Somehow I just felt like she would appreciate having a name. I had started to think of the autoharp as female for some reason. The perfect name popped into my head. We would name her Maybelle after Maybelle Carter who first popularized the instrument. I looked down at her. She seemed happy with the name. Now we just need to learn to play her......