They’re playing the piano while flying in the plane
“When did you last go on vacation?”
I thought for a second and then let out a laugh. “Not for a long time.”
“How come my friend?” David asked when we met together at the ice cream parlour that he and I frequented on most Friday and Saturday nights while we were growing up.
There wasn’t much else to do in the small village of about 500, all of whom could trace their ancestors back a group of lunatic Vikings who refused to get back on their ships after burning most of the villages in North Eastern England.
“It’s an order!” the chief Viking Olaf shouted at the group of men.
“You’re not my boss,” replied the shortest of the small group of ten Vikings who wanted to stay behind and rebuild the village, especially after a small group of children came up to them with one little girl holding her rag doll trying to explain that the doll’s house had been destroyed in their eagerness to put her family out of a home. Minsky, the shortest of the Viking party who stayed behind felt sorry for the little girl Leslie, and looked at his friends asking them if they would like to stay behind and help rebuild the village.
Some who had nothing else going on in their lives back in Viking land agreed, believing that it would be a good deed to do so, while most of the others explained to Minsky that there were so many villages still to burn and so little time. So, Minsky put his middle finger up at Olaf who was shocked at such a terrible display of insubordination. However, before he could throw his spear at Minsky his second in command Oh, shook his head.
“Why bother,” he argued, “he’ll be dead soon.”
Olaf agreed and cleaned the tip of the spear against his right leg forgetting for the umpteenth time that he wasn’t wearing pants any longer, and winced at the pain of another gash on the side of his leg. So, Minsky and his merry band of brothers rebuilt the little village of Upping, which was then renamed Upping on the Becoming because of the little stream caused by the overflowing out house which washed down to the local stream, eventually ended up in the Tyne and then the North Sea.
Once the village was rebuilt, the left-over Vikings integrated with the villagers and the current population of the village now renamed just Upping because the British postal service felt the name was too long to put on the local post office, could trace their history back to Minsky and company.
And so, David Minsky and yours truly sat in the small ice cream parlour, as we did ritually every summer to celebrate the summer solstice, something passed down to us by the Vikings, eating our ice cream and marvelling on the new creations by the owner, which he spent most of the year developing. He never ceased to amaze us. This year it was, ‘One Potato, Two Potato,’ made with frozen sweet potato starch, blended with papaya seeds and melon rinds and was actually pretty good. We did tell him that he needed to add a little sugar to make the flavours burst forth. He agreed.
“Why don’t you go on vacations?” asked David.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “I just feel that by taking a vacation I’m taking time away from making money. I don’t know how you and Agnes go on vacations so often and still make so much money.”
“Well, it’s very easy, John,” my name is John, “Agnes and I and sometimes tutti fruti,” that’s their son when he doesn’t identify as fruiti tutti their daughter, “travel selling the pianos you build.”
“But if I remember correctly, last month you went to Biafra, do they play the piano there?”
“Yes they do,” he replied giving the owner of the ice cream store a thumbs up once he had added the sugar to the ice cream and gave him a sample. “In fact, they have a very large and successful music school and classical music orchestra.”
“Wow! I never knew that. Did they buy a piano?”
“No unfortunately they didn’t. They ran out of funds. Apparently, they spent the funds they had raised to buy a piano on installing a running track at the high school.”
“Oh that’s a shame,” I agreed with David. “By the way, what did you do with the piano you took with you?”
“Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed out loudly enough for the entire ice cream parlour to look around at us. “We couldn’t get it out of the plane when we returned. It’s just one of those funny things. It’s like putting your hand in a jar to grab some marbles and then when you try to take your hand out your fist is stuck. So, you’re faced with a decision. Either to let go of the marbles, which was the reason you put your hand in the jar in the first place, or break the jar and keep the marbles. Well, it was the same with the plane. We managed to squeeze it in but when we came to take it out, it wouldn’t budge.”
“And you certainly can’t break the plane in half,” I added making a face at the ice cream parlour owner because he hadn’t added sugar to my ice cream. That resulted in him flying over to our table taking my ice cream away, only to return it a few moments later with the sugar added. The only problem was that he forgot to blend it in. So now I was chewing on sugar cubes.
“No, we couldn’t break the plane in half, so the airline came up with a brilliant idea. In future while people are boarding the plane, the pilot or the flight attendant will play the piano and what they have found is that it serves as a stress reliever for the passengers. Therefore, old chap,” David concluded, “I have here in my pocket a bunch of orders for your pianos. It looks like several airlines want to do the same thing. And guess what?”
“What?” I asked as I’m supposed to.
“You’ll have so much money you can go on vacation with Sammy or is it Samantha, I never remember.”
“Samantha,” I replied, “this week it’s Samantha.” Wow I thought to myself can you imagine my pianos being played onboard planes. “More ice cream!” I shouted and Jerry Jones, he’s a legal Welsh immigrant, waved back in delight.