If you're out there, Lonnie Houser, come on down. Colleen Pedersen would like to chat with you about that little note you left beneath your piano's keyboard in 1954.
If you're long gone, she'd at least like to talk to your widow, your grandkids, perhaps your nephews or nieces. She'd even settle for your barber or the kid who used to mow your lawn."Somebody out there must know Lonnie Houser," says Colleen of Salt Lake City, who has tried to solve the mystery for seven years. "If he's still alive, I'd love to invite him over to play his old piano again."
The odds of Houser reading this column, then showing up to play Rachmaninoff at the Pedersen house are admittedly slim, but I agreed to a Free Lunch with Colleen just the same.
You have to admire the tenacity of a woman who has lost sleep over a simple note that reads: "Put in here on February 16, 1954. Anybody who finds this and the dime can keep the dime. -- Lonnie Houser, Brigham City, Utah."
The dime is history, but the note was found when Colleen and her husband, Chris, had the upright grand refinished eight years after they rescued it from somebody's garage.
"I've always loved a mystery," says Colleen, 40, who once performed murder mysteries for a living and who, I suspect, still huddles under the covers with her collection of Nancy Drews. "It might sound crazy, but I really want to see this thing resolved."
We're sitting on bar stools in Colleen's kitchen, looking at Lonnie Houser's yellowed note and eating chicken Caesar salads. Colleen is sharing her lunch with Dibble, a pampered cockatiel who swoops over every few minutes to eat whatever he likes from her plate. Just off the kitchen in the den, the old upright beckons, covered with family photos and bright red children's song books.
"I grew up playing on an old upright grand of my father's," says Colleen, who moved beyond "Eensy, Weensy Spider" years ago and now plays complicated Mozart pieces with more black than white on the pages.
"After I got married," she says, "I became nostalgic for another piano like that, but my husband and I didn't have any money. We looked in thrift shops, we checked the want ads. But all the pianos cost too much or were in horrible shape."
Then the same week that she and Chris received a tax refund for $250, they heard about an old Beckwith upright grand made by Sears Roebuck in 1919. It was covered in plastic in a Sandy garage. Asking price? $250.
"Looking at it was like falling in love," says Colleen. "The woman was selling it for her sister. Of course, I sure wish now I'd thought to ask for her name. She might have known Lonnie."
The Pedersens had the exterior of the mahogany piano redone eight years later. When the refinisher removed the keyboard and discovered the note, Colleen knew she couldn't rest until she found the author.
"I called every Houser in the phone book and did a statewide search at the library," she says. "I even did a nationwide search on the Internet. But I came up with nothing."
Some might call Colleen obsessive, but she says she simply wants to meet the man who once played her family's prized possession. "This piano is such an important part of our lives -- all three of my kids have had lessons on it," she says. Even her husband has gotten into the act, insisting that his teacher paste a gold star on each song he passes.
"People have a real need to leave a piece of themselves behind," says Colleen. "Maybe that's what Lonnie was doing with the note. I like thinking that the piano meant a lot to him, too."
Have a story? Let's do lunch. E-mail your name, phone number and what's on your mind to (freelunch@desnews.com) or send a fax to 466-2851. You can also write me at the Deseret News, P.O. Box 1257, Salt Lake City, UT 84110.