Actually, don't give me a break

If anyone asks, I definitely didn't break the organ at my regular church.

I may have been present. I may have been playing the organ at the time. I may have pulled out all the stops and pushed the volume box to 11 while playing a very loud postlude I was trying to practice.

But I didn't break it, I swear.

It was going so well. The piece I was playing wasn't as hard as I thought. I was getting it to sound pretty good. I'd already practiced the stuff for the wedding I was playing.

I was about halfway through the piece when sound stopped coming from the pipes.

Uh-oh.

Then I heard the organ shut itself off. (It kind of sounds like a vacuum turning off, without the high-pitched whine.)

Oh, no. That can't be good.

Then I smelled what sure seemed like smoke.

Crap.

Into the pipe room I went. Was anything on fire?

No. Whew.

But I needed to get into the bell tower, where some of the electrical stuff was, to make sure none of that was smoking. To get there, I had to climb a rotting wooden ladder to a plywood platform, then climb another ladder to get into the bell tower.

I'm not light, by the way. But I did it. Nothing on fire. Good.

I reported the outage to the appropriate authorities. We thought it was just the circuit breaker quitting on us. Nope.

So now I won't be playing the organ at church for at least a couple weeks; I'll just be playing the piano. The piece that apparently broke had recently been replaced, making this doubly frustrating. And, of course, it won't be cheap to fix, either.

Argh.

Good thing we have that piano, though. Or we'd be singing a capella. And that wouldn't be much fun.