A musician father

My father was a percussionist, a very good musician with perfect pitch. He had joined the army at age 16, and studied music as well as conducting with the head of the Garde Républicaine in Paris. In Strasbourg, he did not get the bench of the timpani player he had been replacing for several years at the Opéra. His salary was slim and to make ends meet, he played for radio and in movie houses accompanying silent films. The timpani and kettledrums were always busy marking the punches, falls and racing around. But the silent films that had created work for so many musicians were replaced by talkies, and the musicians went to play in courtyards and public squares for pennies people would throw from their windows. I often saw them on my way home from school, numb with cold and starving.