Three feet of inspiration.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)

AS A FORMER MANAGER for Forbes Piano Company, I was saddened to read about its closing in your July issue. E.E. Forbes, the founder, was like a father to me and his grandson, French Forbes Jr., is one of the best friends that I have ever had.

At this time our industry is experiencing a lot of challenges, and many Music Trades articles are helpful and encouraging. I would like to share a "Darby" Family story that has been encouraging to me and may be helpful for your readers also.

A young man named Reuben Upton Darby (1877-1957), from a small town in Maryland, got bitten by the gold bug. He made the long trek west, staked out a claim and started to dig. Soon he struck gold, fabulous quantities of it. Back to his hometown he hurried breathless with excitement. The samples of his gold made it easy for him to raise funds among friends and relatives for installing machinery to work the claim. With a band of partners he returned to Colorado. Machinery was installed, digging began, and they figured up their profits every night.

Then the unexpected happened as it usually does. The gold suddenly disappeared. Apparently it had been just a small pocket of extremely rich ore. There seemed nothing to do but quit. So they sold out to a secondhand dealer at a dead loss. The disheartened men returned home to face folks who had put their life savings into the venture.

The secondhand dealer was in no rush to dismantle the machinery. He called in some experts, who discovered that, centuries before, the earth's crust had slipped at the very spot where the exhausted mine was located. According to their calculations there would still be large quantities of ore in the mine just about three feet farther down.

They started to dig--one foot, two feet, then three feet--and lo! There was the gold again. No, the mine had not played out; it was the original owners who had petered out. Their stick-to-it-ive-ness was short by three feet. The second man took hundreds of thousands of dollar's worth of ore out of the mine. Darby took very little gold out of the mine. Instead, he took a load of debts-plus a hard-earned lesson he never forgot. Those three feet were burned into his soul.

He got a job as a salesman. Whenever he was turned down, he thought of those three feet he had failed to dig in Colorado, and he went back to his prospect with a different approach. R.U. Darby soon became one of America's top salesmen. After a turndown he would go back and try the next "three feet." Finally he earned enough to repay every penny of his friends' and relatives' money.

Keep a copy of this Darby Gold Mine story, and as we all face the challenges of the music business we can be profoundly inspired by Reuben Darby. I suggest you buy an inexpensive three-foot folding rule. Keep this magic stick on your desk and when you become pessimistic the rule whispers encouragement. When discouraged, ready to quit, the magic stick shouts, "hang in there ... keep on!"

Jim Darby

Owner Capitol Music

Montgomery, Alabama

IN RESPONSE TO CHUCK CLYNES' letter in your July issue regarding the need for modernized inventory methods, of course he is right. My only question is, when he suggests that such a move would be a "needed leap into the 21st century," has it not occurred to anyone that we are about to conclude an entire decade of the new millenium?! How can this industry still be having these inane conversations?! To those who would withhold approval to getting on board such notions, you really do need to get out of the way of progress.

Gerson Rosenbloom

Spectrum Strategies

Medford, NJ

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