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I was a full time piano player from 1964-1984. Suddenly, n 1984, all the piano jobs in Detroit disappeared seemingly overnight with the invention of the electric piano. When these things were invented, every bar and restaurant nationwide trashed their pianos and put two more tables where they used to be. This significantly increased business. Now, for weekend entertainment, they hired someone to walk in, set up a keyboard on one of the tables, and put a "foot pedal drum enhancer" on the floor to play pre-programmed rhythms. The glorious pianos of yesteryear became liabilities overnight and were pitched into alleys.
Every small town bar like this had a piano in it. The tradition went back about 100 years.
This was a typical sight in the 1980s. I saw many of them.
Piano movers were now moving former household centerpieces to the dumps.
On a keyboard like this, any rhythm you wanted could be obtained by pressing a button. If you played a one-note melody, other buttons could fill in the chords for you. The era of great pianists was coming to an end. I once heard a foppish entertainer say, "Now here's where I'll bring in the strings..." He pushed a button and violins started playing behind a sappy tune.
Piano tuners all went out of business because the "digital sampled sounds" in keyboards never had to be tuned and were advertised as "sounding just like real pianos."
I refused to play them.
Now What?
We had 35 acres of woods and many thousands of saw trees standing. An old friend of mine was the president of a company near here. He looked at our place and told me if I could make pallets and sundry wood products for him, he'd buy every one we could make. Thus began...
The Sawmill Years
We bought a Woodmizer bandsaw mill and built a sawbarn to put other equipment in as well.
Building a Barn
The Woodmizer bandsaw mill. The barn is being built around us. We used our own trees for the upright supports. Our versatile 1950s era Gravely tractor was used for all kinds of tasks.
Linda's parents, Dick & Carolyn Leithauser, routinely drove 100 miles to help with the construction. Carolyn (affectionately known as Maud) always brought dinner along.
My dad, David Milne, also assisted in every way possible. Here pictured with myself and teenage neighbor Steve Ball.
The barn building continued. Much of the wood was cut on on Woodmizer mill.
Battery powered nail guns were unknown in those days. It was all hammers and nails. (These were not good for piano players. They strengthened the wrong muscles in the wrist.)
I'm dragging reclaimed corrugated metal shingles to the roof. They'll be attached by more swinging of hammers.
Going to Work
We acquired Tree Farm status in the State of Michigan.
I became quite muscular from picking up heavy logs and pitching them around.
Our little Gravely tractor pulled small loads of wood around.
The mill is making wood while our radial arm saw cut boards to length.
Left: Barn construction goes on into the snow months.
Right: Our old Ford 9N tractor (1939) was fitted with a hi-lo lift on the back. It could hoist materials to the roof or pick up large stacks of logs to take to the mill. Today it's classified as an antique, and we're still using it.
The Woodmizer produced quality wood and filled the barn in no time.
We aquired a gang saw, capable of making many boards or 2x4s at once.
Squared off beams, known as "cants," were fed into the gang saw. The huge motor didn't even slow down for these.
Left: my dad makes an adjustment to the mill.
Right: I put straps around wood to be shipped.
My dad was my greatest friend and supporter, from the time I was a horn player in east coast symphonies to my years as a barroom piano player, and now to the beginning of a new venture of which I knew nothing about.
We had thousands of trees on our property to start this project. Later the DNR enlisted us to go around and pick up grade 3 log piles, now that there was a use for them other than firewood.
My old tractor with its 8' vertical lift was (and still is) extremely fast at tossing logs onto trucks. Because of its speed and manueverability, I could load logging trucks faster with my 9N than the big fork lift machines.
Loading logs onto the feeder ramp for the mill.
9N before the loading mast.
I put forks on the front bucket to carry loads. The weight on the front wheels resulted in "armstrong power steering," which tested my muscles every time.
Banded wood heading for the truck.
We only have a few photos of our army 6x6 double-axel dump truck. I never saw anything with as much power as this thing.
We used left over roofing panels to fashion sides for increased sawdust of firewood space inside. I'm looking very tired after at least eight hours of slinging logs on the mill, and now preparing to load this truck with firewood.
Dad takes daughters Christine (left) and Carrie for a ride in the beast.
The winch on the front of this truck could pull the trees out of the ground if we wanted to.
The Red Truck
We purchased this from a local farmer. It broke down just about every time it went out on the road. To this day, Linda and I wish we had shot it before it could break down on us again.
Our pallet buyer need more pallets than we could produce from the Woodmizer. This forced us to buy a 1920's Farquhar rotary mill. We found it ninety miles away in an ancient sawmill. It was our job to take it apart, load it on the truck, and haul it back to our place. The police once stopped us just to behold an old truck with an even older sawmill.
The mill arrives in our driveway. Note the huge diesel engine and the size of the drive belt that powered the equipment.
The saw blade was 5' in diameter. I would stand next to this thing for the next four years.
Now that it was here, we had to unload and set it up again.
A blade to remember.
Dick Leithauser and Steve Ball assist me in sending wood through the planer.
The pile of slabwood bespeaks the rate of the production we did now.
Sending wood through the planer.
Cants lined up to go through the gang saw.
Logs headed for the mill.
Log piles were all around the mill.
Logs on the feeder ramp as I'm adjusting the carriage for another trip through the blade.
More logs pouring onto the ramp.
Linda takes the slabs and directs them to either fire wood or usable wood.
She feeds a usable board through the belt driven edger, which trims the bark off both sides.
Note the belt driven swing saw structure at the far end.
On left:
This is the swing saw before we installed it in the mill. The operator swung the blade back and forth to cut raw wood into cants or boards. It only takes one look to see how dangerous this thing is.
The electric motor on this motor required more power than our generators could produce. Now we had to bring in the Edison line for sufficient power.
Steve helping to assemble pallets from wood we produced that morning. By now we had pneumatic nail guns.
There is a dark side to how the sawmill ended. Our mill was completely lawful, protected by the Right to Farm Act, endorsements from the DNR, and many more state and federal institutions. In spite of this, we were continually hounded by weighmasters over technical "violations" (which were totally unfounded), and scrutiny from local officials for similar reasons. At one time we had 100 cars a day stopping at the end of our driveway, taking pictures and attempting to prove we were somehow doing something illegal. This resulted in massive costs in time and money. I even had to defend myself in court against three tickets from the weighmaster, and I was able to convine the judge I was totally legal. When he dismissed the tickets the weighmaster went berserk. But it had cost me many days away from running the mill to prepare for this case.
On New Year's Day of 1990 we were broke. Linda and I didn't have enough spare change to create one dollar. Now we risked losing our house and property during the time of 13% interest rates and an astronomical mortgage payment.
We eventually learned why we'd been harassed so much: a corrupt attorney wanted to drive us off our home on the bluff so he could buy it at a bankruptcy price, then subdivide the most scenic spot in Lapeer County.
But we saved our house. I had been a semi-professional pool player, and Linda had superb office skills. She quickly got a job as a typist/transcriptionist in a local hospital. Linda worked the night shift and I picked up the pool stick again. The next three years were rough but filled with colorful pool hall stories. But...
That is a story for another time.
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