Thursday, July 21, 2022
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Dick Fyfe's Harmonica Story:
There's A Gun In My Friend's Pocket .... Do You Want The Harmonicas?
My 91 year old veteran paratrooper friend, Dick Fyfe, loves to tell us this one about the light side of his wartime service. When Dick was in Korea, he was playing his harmonica one day, when a local Korean who worked in the camp suddenly offered him $10 to buy it. Dick only paid a dollar for it, so he quickly accepted the deal. Several days later, the man returned and asked Dick if he wanted to sell any more harmonicas. Apparantly, the guy could make a tidy profit re-selling them on the black market, so he wanted as many as possible, and still for ten dollars each! A little light went off in Dick's brain!
Every month one unlucky paratrooper from the barracks would be assigned to take an inconveniant plane trip to Tokyo to drop off and retrieve the unit's mail. Riding for two days in the transport plane was boring and noisy, so everybody was baffled when Dick cheerfully volunteered for the duty. Little did they know that Dick would arrive in Tokyo, run over to the airfield PX, and buy about 50 harmonicas. When he got back to Korea, he got in touch with his local contact. He'd hire a friend to bring a pistol to give him cover, and they'd venture into town to collect $500 for their valuable musical cargo. For the rest of his service time, Dick had a highly profitable side business.
When his stint was over, family and friends were surprised that Dick was mysteriously able to buy a brand new car outright, and also put down a high deposit on a very nice apartment. When they asked where he got his money, Dick would laugh and say, "I brought the beautiful gift of music to a war torn country."
A funny little addendum to this tale ........
I'm a music teacher, and a short time after Dick told me this story, I was teaching cello to a recently arrived Korean girl. I asked her if she had learned cello in her school back in Korea. "Oh no!", she chuckled. "My mother had to take me to outside lessons. They only teach harmonica in school"! I almost fell out of my chair! That night, I searched "Harmonica, Korean" in Youtube, and down scrolled an unbelievable array of postings filled with extremely high level semi-classical harmonica arrangements! Perhaps Dick Fyfe actually did indeed "bring the beautiful gift of music to a war torn country"!!!!!
Mike Carbonneau - Nov 11, 2021
