Child’s Accordion (Russian)

I was looking balefully at this accordion through a pawn shop window one day when my wife and I were out for a stroll. This was just before my birthday.

I don’t know who made this, but the logo says “child” in Russian. To my ears, the Russian word for “accordion” sounds a lot like “harmonica”. This I learned from one of the movers who dragged all of this stuff into our current home. He and his partner had been pretty quiet all day. Then one of them picks this instrument up, gives it a squeeze, and says in a thick Russian accent, “baby harmonica”.

“In 1990, the city of San Francisco designated the accordion as its official instrument. The cities of Detroit, Skokie, Illinois, and St. Paul, Minnesota eventually did the same.”