Couple’s Work Brings Music to the Ears of Their Customers

Kathleen and Christian Eric of Costa Mesa were having a good time showing visitors the antique music boxes they repair for a living. “You know we’ve only taken 12 days off in the last 3 1/2 years,” she said.

From the excitement they generate just talking about music boxes, it seems they would rather be home anyway, if for no other reason to show them off and to clear a two-year backlog.

“Here, compare this with a piano,” Christian said, opening a music box nearly as big as a small piano. “A piano has 88 keys and this has 230 notes,” he added, while making a point of how softly the music plays.

“Back in those days there weren’t planes, or cars or telephones to disturb the sound so it could be played soft,” he said. “You might also know there wasn’t any other form of home entertainment.”

And as if in regret, he said each of the 30 large and small music boxes awaiting repair in his shop will take one to two months to complete, partly because he has to make all replacement parts by hand.

“In a certain respect,” Christian said, “it (the backlog) gives me a little freedom, but on the other hand, I feel trapped by the quantity of work ahead.” He believes that there are only a dozen quality music box repairmen in the world and that he is one of them.

They also repair less costly music boxes, but their main effort is to restore the quality antique machines made in the 1800s, mostly in Switzerland, still the only major music box producer in the world.

“When I first started, I felt I had to take care of them all,” he said. “Now I’m a bit more callous.”

The Erics oftentimes prowl swap meets and garage sales for old music boxes, hoping to find some to help him complete writing a comprehensive book on music boxes, although he says he has yet to find anything of substance in their quest. “Other collectors are the people we trade with,” Christian said.

The Erics were last year’s co-presidents of the West Coast chapter of Musical Box Society International, a group, Christian said, “that has an appreciation for beauty, antiquity, preservation and possibly for historical interest.” The international society has 2,500 members

As a parting remembrance for his workshop visitors, Christian switched on the music mechanism of a statue depicting a tipsy man. It started playing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. . . .”

“We do have fun here,” Christian smiled, as did Kathleen.

Veteran Pacific Bell telephone service representative Joan Lein, 40, of Buena Park has heard just about every hard luck story about not paying a phone bill.

But an elderly Santa Ana woman got to Lein, saying that she overlooked a $12.35 phone bill, which now was overdue, and just couldn’t pay it.

“We hear a lot of stories,” said Lein, the mother of two, “but this woman really needed help.”

After work, Lein paid the bill herself.

Let’s hear it for La Habra author Jackie Hyman, 36, . . . or is she Jacqueline Topaz, or Jacqueline Diamond or Jacqueline Jade?

Well one of them is a finalist in the June 1986 Golden Medallion Award of the Romance Writers of America.

Actually the nominee is Hyman, a former Orange County newswoman turned romance writer.

“I didn’t think Hyman was a romantic name,” she explained, “so I decided to use precious gems for my pen names.” Her real middle name is Diamond.

She said a friend suggested she also use the name Jacqueline Zircon.

“I think I’ve got enough names now,” said Hyman, or Topaz, or Jade, or. . . .

The knowledgeable person surely knows not all birds fly in flocks.

For instance, the swallows that just returned to Mission San Juan Capistrano came in a “flight.” And while geese stand in a gaggle, they fly in skeins.

And after a check with Fountain Valley veterinarian Richard Woerpel, a bird authority, other bird groups fly these ways:

A cast of hawks.

An exaltation of larks.

A siege of herons.

A company of widgeons.

A muster of peacocks.

A plump of wildfowl.

And then, of course, there’s the covert of coots.

Acknowledgments--Dawn Stone, 13, student at MacArthur Intermediate School in Santa Ana, won the Orange County Junior High School Spelling Bee over 66 others and will vie in a national spelldown in Washington in May. She nailed down the local title by spelling “assiduous.”