Memories and a Man Room

I decided to create an economical addition to my garage and turn it into a memory and “man room” that I might retreat to from everyone, including my wife and my seventeen-year-old son (the last of my children still living at home) and from my loving but at times pain in the ass 90-year-old in-laws who have taken over my old recording studio/man room; that is currently being converted into an apartment for them to live with us. It’s really a GOOD RELATIONSHIP. They will live with us to safely live out their remaining years, help share our living expenses, and save my 93-year-old father-in-law from terrorizing all the other drivers on the 150-mile drive from Boca Raton to family gatherings. Which, by the way, he sometimes has to take a 20-minute nap about halfway through the drive.

I got sidetracked, as you, my readers, cannot help but notice. I was cleaning up all things worthy of saving versus taking to the burn pit outback.  Giving my son entertainment by creating a huge blaze that probably pisses off the neighbors a few hundred feet away as the smoke traverses their air space (as a farm kid, we regularly burned baling twine, so screw um). The same bunch that bitches every 4^Th of July when we used to fire my black powder cannon every hour (damned socialist communists).

Once again, I strolled off the path of complete thoughts and structured paragraphs (my playful response to my readers is similar to my neighbors who don’t appreciate my backyard bonfires). I found old pictures of old bands I was in, family pictures, and a mountain of plaques from my Jaycee days (which for decoration, I created an “I love me” wall and hung all the pictures. I moved in all my old band stuff, enabling me to be locked into a room with 98db of pure musical ecstasy and no one around to tell me to “turn that damn stuff down!” As I rummaged through, I found an old LP that I mounted on my record player (yes, I still have one of those). It was a live recording of my old high school symphonic band recorded at a district band contest in 1970.  We were a 3-year-old high school band at the time and a new music department. Our mascot was “the Commodores,” and our band uniforms were marine navy blue with white cross belts and all. Before we were dismissed to form up for marching, we had to “pass inspection,” and we were given demerits for improperly polished brass buttons and strict decorum, including standing at attention during the 15-to-20-minute rigorous inspection by senior band officers. The band was about 80 in size, and we were directed by a salty ex-navy band director who was a real hard-ass making us play scales for what seemed like hours in a practice room as punishment for not having our part up to performance quality.

One of our pieces chosen by him for the contest was Tchaikovsky’s Finale of the 9th Symphony (this is how it was listed and spelled on the album its really the 4th Symphony) , an extremely hard but exciting piece. All the other older high schools in the band contest laughed and thought Lil’ ole Eau Gallie High School couldn’t cut that piece. When it was our turn, after many of the powerhouse bands performed, we came to perform with 80 scared 16-18 year kids, looking sharp in their Navy Blue uniforms, thinking we might get laughed out of the gymnasium (which had surprisingly excellent acoustics).  The old crusty Navy band conductor lifted his baton, and off we went playing our ass off, playing way over our head every tempo, every staccato, every dynamic change was executed well enough to make old Tchaikovsky’s eyebrows rise (or at least these kids thought so) and evidently so did everyone else there did too. As we reached the up-tempo powerful end of the piece from where I was sitting, I looked up at the old navy maestro; he was sweating, and then I saw it. Tears were streaming down his face.  We finished the piece to a standing ovation from all our peers.  I looked back at the tough old navy man as he quickly extracted his jacket hanky (they wore those kinds of jackets in those days) and as discreetly as he could wipe the tears from his eyes as he motioned for the band to summarily stand and bow. He quickly resumed his grizzled demeanor and just smiled at us. 

Have any of you ever had moments like that? Well, I’ve only had one like that, and it is engrained in my mind forever, and as I write this, I find myself crying the tears of that old navy man even though it is 50 years later.

Moving on through the old pictures, I found one of the University of Florida Jazz band in which I was playing lead alto sax at the time in concert in Ploiesti,  Rumania, but not even that surpassed that moment with my high school band.  Okay, I’m done crying now, till next time.