"It was so cold we had to chop up the piano for…

Musical “chords” shouldn’t be confused with “cords” of firewood, but there have been puns. “It was so cold…we had to chop up the piano for firewood—but we only got two chords” was printed on the Athropolis blog on February 7, 2004.

Wikipedia: Cord (unit)
The cord is a unit of measure of dry volume used to measure firewood and pulpwood in the United States and Canada.

A cord is the amount of wood that, when “racked and well stowed” (arranged so pieces are aligned, parallel, touching and compact), occupies a volume of 128 cubic feet (3.62 m3). This corresponds to a well-stacked woodpile 4 feet (122 cm) high, 8 feet (244 cm) long, and 4 feet (122 cm) deep; or any other arrangement of linear measurements that yields the same volume.

The name cord probably comes from the use of a cord or string to measure it.

Athropolis (February 7, 2004)
It was so cold…
(...)
16. It was so cold . . .
we had to chop up the piano for firewood - but we only got two chords

Google Groups: ott.general
cold?
Darrell
1/21/05
It was so cold I had to chop up my piano for firewood ... I only goy two chords.

Google Groups: alt.callahans
not really back-Shadowdancer stops by briefly to check out the Place
Wesley Struebing
7/16/06
(...)
>“We sometimes chopped up our furniture for firewood. Dad hated to chop
>up the piano; he only got two chords out of it.”

30 November 2007, Pensacola (FL) News Journal, “Jokes & Groaners,” pg. B1, col. 5:
It was so cold, people had to chop up their piano for firewood—but they only got two chords.

Google Groups: The Grif.net
12/15/08 Grif.Net - It was So Cold
Dr. Bob
12/15/08
(...)
And the best one . . .
It was so cold . . . we had to chop up the piano for firewood - but we only got two chords.

South Marion Citizen (Dunnellon, FL)
Some of my best friends are (snow) flakes
By Dick Frank
Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 7:00 pm
(...)
We had to chop up the piano for firewood, but we only got two chords.

Twitter
nonamedufus‏
@nonamedufus
It was so cold . . .
we had to chop up the piano for firewood - but we only got two chords.
9:52 AM - 14 Jan 2009

Google Groups: alt.books.dean-koontz
I was so cold…..
PPPG
1/29/11
(...)
It was so cold . . .
we had to chop up the piano for firewood - but we only got two chords.

10 February 2011, Taos (NM) News, “Overheard and Unconfirmed” by Rick Romancito, pg. Z49:
For instance, it was so cold ...
(...)
We had to chop up the piano for firewood, but we only got two chords.

Forest River Forums
It’s So Cold Jokes
Iggy
01-07-2014, 03:22 PM
(...)
“It’s so cold that we had to cut the piano up for fire wood. We only got two chords.”

Google Books
Medicine for a Merry Heart
By Larry Ellis
Ishpeming, MI: BookVenture Publishing LLC
2017
Pg. ?:
It was so cold: We had to chop up the piano for firewood–but we only got 2 chords.

Reddit—Clean Jokes
It’s so cold out, we had to chop up our piano for firewood. (self.cleanjokes)
submitted December 31, 2017 by mrlifetraveler
We only got two chords.

Reddit—Oneliners
It is so cold that I had to cut up my piano for firewood, unfortunately I only got two chords.
submitted January 2, 2018 by wonliners

“It was so cold we had to chop up the piano for firewood, but we only got two chords”