From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
22 January
In the late 1960’s I was stationed with the US Army in
Germany. The good news was that I had NOT been sent to Vietnam [there were
500,000 other GI’s there at the time] but even so I was really depressed being
so far from home for such a long time. I was also bored. So I thought about
filling the considerable cracks in my life by what I could do at/with a piano.
- I went to the
local officers’ club and asked if they’d like some background music during
Happy Hour on Friday night. The guy was over the moon: “You play the piano
and you’re American? SURE! What do you charge?” [I was automatically In
Demand – local musicians, I learned, didn’t confer any hometown flavor on
homesick officers.] “$20.00 for the night, 6 to 10,” I said. He agreed on
the spot. That worked so spectacularly well that I did the same thing at
another nearby officers’ club for Saturday night, and a third for Sunday
afternoon. Check it out: $60 a week when my Army salary was $135 a month.
Wow!
- I put a piano
teacher add in the local Army rag, “Stars and Stripes,” [$5.00/hour], and
within 4 weeks had 7 pupils.
In the meantime I heard about this 10%-compounded-quarterly
dollar-drain savings program the Army was promoting. I saved 90% of my
Army salary for the 20 months I was posted in Germany, and paid all my bills –
from buying toothpaste to buying train tickets - with what I earned teaching
and playing piano in Germany. Saving the Army salary and living on what I could
do at the piano made the whole Army-in-a-faraway country actually exciting!
Also, when I was discharged I ended up with a check for over
$2,000, money I parked in the stock market until, 5 years later, it had grown
to a very respectable downpayment for the first house my new wife and I bought.
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