Coincidental Reading, Again

On Saturday the last stop of our errands was at a drugstore on Connecticut Ave., NW. While I walked about looking for this or that, I listened to the pop music playing  and reflected that the inventor of canned music for public places was no benefactor to humanity.

Once home, I happened to look into Sketches from a Life by George Kennan, looking for I know not what--probably something about the Baltic or Russia--and finding a passage from February 19, 1950:

On the train from St. Louis to Texas the lounge car had canned music ("Ave Maria") emerging from somewhere in the roof. We used to say: "The customer is always right." But what of the man today who doesn't like "The Rustic Wedding" or "Rose Marie" or "Ave Maria," or has heard them too often, or who doesn't like music at all through loudspeakers, or who just doesn't like music at all? I raised this question in my mind as I fled back to the sleeping-car; and the wheels of the train, which used to clatter in so friendly and reassuring a way on the railroad voyages of my boyhood, seemed to be clicking off the words: "That-to-you; that-to-you; that-to-you."