Sub-title: "The organ grinder hasn't been around this week."

>[ The earlier electronically-controlled crank-organs played data
>[ stored on a removable ROM card.  I guess that, due to customer
>[ demand, newer organs can play from standard MIDI files stored
>[ on floppy disk, and might even be playable from a remote MIDI
>[ signal source.  -- Robbie

Hokay, wait a second.  _Electronically-controlled_ crank organs?

Are these like what those old-time organ grinders used -- the guys with
the monkey, etc.?  Somebody's still making and using these?  And
electronically-controlled ones, at that?

I guess they must still be popular at county fairs in Belgium or France
or somewhere.  They still have circuses there, after all.

They're sure not evident at fairs here in the USA, where county fairs
exhibit that house made out of a redwood tree, and sell sump pumps, and
run those little booths with the air-powered machine guns where if you
shoot the star out of the little piece of paper you can win a stuffed
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

They also sell Belgian waffles, but I suppose they do that in Belgium,
too.  But I've never seen a crank organ outside of a carousel organ,
and these are usually just recordings.

Or do they still have guys cranking the organ in the streets of
European cities, hoping to make a few Groschen?  I knew that they used
to have barrel organs in Amsterdam (my father bought a phonograph
record of them in the 1950's) but I sort of thought most of them would
be in museums.  I sure didn't know they were still being manufactured,
much less with microprocessors.

I suppose that it's eminently clear that I haven't been to Europe.  But
I'm still, in my profound ignorance, surprised that you can buy a new
crank organ.  Where the heck do they use these things?

Mark Kinsler -  who at least now knows what zephyr skin is.