It wasn’t your fault of course. Going to the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum in North Tonawanda for me is like dropping in at a friend’s house. Accordingly, we whooshed by the (unstaffed) ticket booth and began touring the first exhibit room, a carved menagerie, with no further thought. Besides, it was National Band Organ Day.

I can’t resist a public piano, so I sat down at a coin-fed Wurlitzer player: and immediately summoned every docent in the building by hazarding a single, warbly note. Unfortunately, it was a foot-powered model, and none too efficient, because I had to pedal like my life depended on it to produce any sound (which was anyway completely drowned out by the sound of clacking pedals, wheezing bellows and groaning machinery).

You met my friend and sometime research partner Doug Hershberger, who was giving a demonstration on how paper music rolls were copied. We found out we were supposed to pay only at the end of our visit, when we went to the gift shop. We asked the gentleman at the counter about the cost of a carousel ride, and we were told they were free with admission. This admission being $12 per adult, we politely put off the pleasantry for another occasion, bought you a onesie by way of apology, and returned somewhat sheepishly to the parking lot.