I have a thing for old music — the written kind, not wax cylinders or old 45s.

I suppose it started back in my childhood, when I’d do the forbidden and sneak over to the piano when no one was looking. I knew better than to plunk the keys; noise would bring an adult.

If I was careful, though, I could lift the lid of the piano bench and poke through the contents. Not surprisingly, it was sheet music, mostly from when my mother took lessons.

The lessons fulfilled an aspiration of my grandmother’s, that her only child would become a pianist. Unfortunately, my mother is tone deaf. So while she learned the mechanics quite well, her musicality left a lot to be desired.

Still, she persevered. Trips into town often resulted in more sheet music or music books coming into the house. Often, after I was in bed, I’d hear my mother pounding out a tune that didn’t sound much like what I’d heard on the radio.

My grandmother decided her granddaughters should also take piano lessons, so we did. Ever the doting gramma, she encouraged us to play for her — and she liked hymns.

Certainly the neighbors must have tired of hearing “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” and “In The Garden,” but Gramma never seemed to. She’d applaud as if she was attending a Carnegie Hall concert and encourage me to play more.

With someone to spur me on, I practiced regularly and branched out from the Methodist hymnal to music from the piano bench. Even now, when the mood strikes me, I’ll settle in at my electronic keyboard, pull out an old music book — one of my favorites is “Elvis Presley Sings Gospel” — and let ’er rip.

Many years ago, my parents purchased a church and several dozen hymnals came with it. A couple of years ago, I asked my mother for one of those hymnals, and things snowballed from there.

On a trip north to see my mother, she handed me a cardboard box before I left with a simple, “Here. These are yours.”

Inside were numerous pieces of sheet music and books that had been my grandmother’s and my aunts, from a WWII-era songbook with lyrics that are highly inappropriate in this day and age.

It also contained a Mennonite hymnal, a Lutheran hymnal and a couple of non-denominational hymn books so old they have those funky shaped notes.

As I brought the box into the house, I justified it to Dear Hubby as pure sentiment, that I didn’t want these family items to be lost.

It was a little harder to explain the Christian Science hymnal I bought for three dollars at a thrift store, considering I don’t know a soul who is a member of the Christian Science church and I’ve never attended one.

That moment, I suspect, was when I stepped from collecting to being addicted. Some people look for first editions at garage sales; I’m looking for old hymnals or maybe a really old collection of Christmas songs.

As addictions go, I suppose it’s not bad. And the electronic era in which we live has given me the perfect excuse for adding on and on.

If anyone asks why in the world I keep buying, I just smile sweetly and fib that it’s my new retirement fund — sooner or later, they’re bound to be worth a fortune on e-Bay.

CATHIE SHAFFER can be reached at (606) 473-9851.