What an Old Piano Remembered
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, it was scratched, heavy, and imperfect, but to Joy Neal Kidney, the old upright piano her mother left behind was priceless. She remembered the sound of hymns and simple songs filling the house, her mother’s hands steady on the keys. Years later, when the piano became hers, every touch of the keys carried those moments back. Joy shares the story of her mother's lasting memory through one prized possession.
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? |
| 0:15.1 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:18.5 | From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:23.6 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:26.6 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:33.6 | You know, This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. |
| 0:52.1 | Send them to OurAmerican Stories.com. They're some of our |
| 0:56.4 | favorites. And up next, another story from one of our regular contributors and listener, Joy Neal Kidney. |
| 1:03.7 | Joy is the author of Liora's Letters, the story of love and loss for an Iowa family during |
| 1:09.6 | World War II. And today she shares this story of her |
| 1:12.9 | old upright piano passed down to her from her mother. And Joy listens to our great station in |
| 1:20.7 | Des Moines, W.H.O. Take it away, Joy. It's been in the family for six decades. |
| 1:30.3 | Most of our history with this musical instrument is good, except for one really bad one. |
| 1:36.3 | Uncle Delbert found the dusty piano about 1952 in someone shed near Perry, Iowa, while he was doing some wiring for them. |
| 1:47.1 | He knew that Mom was looking for a piano so my sister and I could take lessons. |
| 1:52.4 | How much did they want for it? |
| 1:54.3 | $45. |
| 1:55.8 | He hauled it to our farmhouse in his electrician's van. |
| 2:00.5 | He and dad lugged it into a corner of the front room, which had a linoleum floor, a plush, plum-colored |
| 2:07.7 | Devonport and chair, a blonde, black and white television with a TV lamp on it, and in the |
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