[Harp-L] John Steinbeck / harmonica

[conruth@xxxxxxxxx]

This is a passage from John Steinbeck's book, THE GRAPES OF WRATH:

 "A harmonica is easy to carry.  Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it
against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of
tobacco.  Now it's ready.  You can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy
single tone, or chords, or melody with rhythm chords.  You can mold the
music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it
full and round like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed
pipes of the hills.  And you can play and put it back in your pocket.  It's
always with you, always in your pocket.  And as you play, you learn new
tricks, new ways to mold the tone with your hands, to pinch the tone with
your lips, and no one teaches you.  You feel around - sometimes alone in
the shade at noon, sometimes in the tent after supper...  Your foot taps
gently on the ground.  Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm.  And if you
lose it or break it, why, it's no great loss.  You can buy another for a
quarter.

John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath

submitted by Madcat