The piano sits at the leafy corner of 43rd and Upton, tucked amid a small group of benches by the Linden Hills Business Association to entice passers-by into making a little public art. On Monday, around 8 p.m., one area resident gave in to temptation.
By twos and threes and fours, 10 fingers danced back and forth across a worn keyboard, pushing soft tunes out into a humid evening.
A few chords snagged on sticky keys and out-of-tune notes, as though they had caught in the tree branches above the upright piano. The surviving notes mixed with barbecue-laden air from the nearby Famous Dave's restaurant and wafted over the knots of chattering families strolling around the shopping village at the heart of Linden Hills.
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"I'm really more of a harmonica player than a pianist," the fingers' owner, John Dillory, sheepishly said as he accompanied the idyllic tableau while waiting for his bus.
Dillory, a volunteer motorman at the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, said he also plays with the Linden Hills Folk Jam.
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"The Museum is pretty nice. You pay $30 a year and get to drive a streetcar. ... And you get to wear stylish clothes, too," he said, and tugged at his rumpled grey uniform shirt.
Hitting several sour notes, Dillory winced.
"Ooh, this is getting really bad," he said.
Abruptly, his fingers froze in place above the keys for several seconds and his eyes narrowed. Cautiously he started tapping individual notes, as if the growing dusk was clouding his memory, too. Pausing again, Dillory started to sing the bluesy rock song he had begun to coax out of the piano.
"In the cool of the evening, when everything is gettin' kinda groovy," he sang as he swayed in his seat in time with the song.
"Can you see if that's the number six?" he said, dropping his slightly gravely baritone and peering around the piano in search of his bus.
Dillory casually wiped the sweat from the corners of his triangular mustache with both hands and continued, softer now.
"Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you," he sang to the gathering night.
