It’s almost time to play taps (in C major, please) for my old piano

Machines have a natural lifespan, and I’m afraid that one of them is dying in my dining room. “I wouldn’t put any more money into this,” is the way Alexander Felides, aka The Piano Doctor, put it after spending almost two hours wrestling with my upright player piano, a brand called Aeolian that was built in 1924. He sounded exactly like a physician warning that a beloved relative had slipped past the point of no return. Many piano owners have heard a similar refrain. America was awash in pianos a century ago, when almost every home had one, and those instruments are nearing the end of their natural lives, headed to dumps or the back of barns.