Travel anywhere in the world and among the underpinnings of life-air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and love to make you will find drums. Drums were civilization's original instrument; the first attempts at making music and more: When the first drummer struck a log with a stick, it became a form of communication-the rhythm of friendship, of warning, of aggression. So it would be folly to suggest that drums are a presence in the oddest places; drums are present in every odd corner of the world, and at the oddest of times. This is one such story.

It begins with a dust-gathering pair of bongo drums in a saloon in the Tel Aviv Hilton that became a respite not only for me but also for a dozen Israeli soldiers on a 12-hour leave from the front during the 1973 war in the Middle East. The Chicago Tribune had sent me there to cover the war and because Israel is such a small nation, we were able to travel to the front, then return to Tel Aviv to file our stories and get drunk. More than 400 reporters covered that war, and perhaps 30 of us went out each day to report on the battles. You rented a car from Hertz; the army gave you a guy with an Uzi to ride shotgun, and you followed the tanks into the battle of the day. Then you returned to Tel Aviv Hilton.

On this particular night, a duo was playing in the lounge-accordion and organ-and our whole crew, glad to be alive after another afternoon in which we were shot at and shelled, were swilling and swelling. That's when I noticed the bongo drums, tucked under the organ's bench.

It turns out that the bongo player was an insurance broker named Zvi Landau, who moonlighted in the lounge. Now he was moonlighting in the Sinai with a rifle. The only reason the accordion player and the organist weren't on the front was that both had suffered army-ending wounds in the 1967 War.

I said to them,"I know how to play those things." The accordion player said, "Cool." He actually said that. "Cool." When the next set started, I had the bongos between my knees and we did an entire Latin set. By the end of the set, the reporters and soldiers were on the tiny dance floor, having a carefree moment before going back to the fighting the next day.

That I was part of that moment remains with me today. And by the way, walking down a Tel Aviv street while I was there, I passed a music shop-a trombone, a few saxophones, a trumpet, a mix-matched drum set, but there, in the window, a dog-eared copy of Jake Jerger's first book. In Israel. My drum teacher. As I said before, for me, drums have always made memories.

- Rick Soll