From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
5 October
Arnold
Kunst and the Piano, Part Three
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 – a scarey place!] 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. You
do the math!
- I also put a
piano teacher add in the local Armed Forces 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 a good 80%
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.
Advantages:
· 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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