Day 1
Music House Museum - Acme, MI

We arrived at the Music House Museum in the early afternoon and found many Roadtreks already there. The Museum doesn't have a campground, but they were letting us dry camp on the grass next to the circle driveway in front of the museum. A total of 43 Roadtreks were expected to arrive, so it was a pretty big rally for a regional rally.

After parking and checking in with the rally masters, we took a tour of the Music House Museum, which turned out to be very fascinating. The theme of the museum was automated mechanical music devices. The tour guide demonstrated various devices such as player pianos, nickelodeons, and organs, which provided music without someone playing them. The music was recorded on metal discs or paper rolls; mechanical devices read the holes in the discs or paper and generated the music by striking strings, as in pianos, or blowing air, as in organs. Here he is demonstrating a nickelodeon.

This is one of the largest instruments in their collection; it is an organ built by Mortier in Belgium. These large organs were typically used in dance halls and grand ballrooms when the live orchestra took a break. About 1500 of these organs were built in the period from 1908 to 1930, but only about 150 are known to survive today. This particular organ was built in 1922.  It is a 97 key organ which plays folding cardboard music "books"; the pipes are housed behind this 30 foot wide by 18 foot high facade. The organ was originally hand cranked, but now is powered by an electric motor, the one concession to modern times.

Prior to dinner we got together with the other rally attendees at a "social hour". It was a chance to say hello to people we had met an earlier rallies, and to meet new friends.

We had a catered dinner that night in the museum. The food was good and socializing in the midst of all those neat musical devices was an interesting experience.

Our after dinner speaker was the curator of the museum, who turned out to be surprisingly young, but very knowledgeable and interesting to listen to. He demonstrated some of the capabilities of a couple of the larger organs, including the Mortier organ. Here, he is showing the cardboard music books the organ reads to play the music. He also let us take a quick look behind the facade to see the "business" side of the organ.