Went to a concert last night

[DFW]

44. Way back in my college days, I was that restaurant musical entertainment

Nixon was in office, and we couldn’t wait for him not to be. But the people in the restaurants just wanted to hear me (or “us,” if there were two or more of us) play, not interrupt their own dinner conversations to impose upon them whatever I had on my mind. This was the same, whether I was playing solo in a fancy French restaurant or as half of a Balkan/Russian duet in a Middle Eastern place run by Iranian Assyrians. In that last place, I was the one who got enlightened. The last time I had heard of Assyrians was in grade school ancient history. I thought they had died out with Ashurbannipal two thousand years ago. I never imagined I’d be hired by his descendants two thousand years later to play Kiša Pada in their night spot in Philadelphia!