MARCHING BAND
Being a high-school band member required participation in marching band. And boy, did Mark and I hate that.
Like most high schools, we had a football team. Along with the cheerleaders and water boys, we’d don our uniforms and perform every week. We practiced our marching routines on Saturday mornings and developed some clever half-time shows. At least, we thought they were.
But whenever we played, either silence or weak applause greeted us. My parents never came to see Mark and I perform at a football game, though they attended our concert performances. I’d like to think it was because it was too cold to be outdoors.
No one in band (even Jay Lowenstein before he moved) was ever invited to any of the post-game football parties. These were held by the football team members mostly at an abandoned stone quarry called, imaginatively enough, “The Quarry.” It was a local hang-out for the “in” crowd.
I always wanted to go. My hopes soared when I briefly dated a football quarterback. I didn’t date Andy for that reason. But he did nothing to actually get me invited. So when Andy got creamed during a particularly tough game, I felt he deserved it. And I let his new girlfriend, a cheerleader, rush to his side.
Our band performances were really not bad, but we did suffer from a few handicaps.
Lakeland High endured years of budget cuts. Mr. Haines said we were lucky to even have a music program, let alone a marching band (yeah, or he would have been long gone).
We barely had enough uniforms and the ones we had, “reeked.” My uniform was huge. The sleeves fell over my hands making it difficult to play. On Mark’s uniform, the pant legs were so short the cuffs flapped as he walked. When he tried to execute a high-step, his entire shin was exposed.
There weren’t enough funds to buy luxury items like those clips to hold the sheets of music in place as you march. We were forced to improvise. And it wasn’t pretty.
Paper clips and rubber bands frequently came off. Sheets of music were trampled before you could even retrieve them. I couldn’t easily attach anything to my instrument. A piccolo doesn’t have a large surface area. So I tried to memorize most of my music. Unfortunately, others didn’t.
When anyone lost their music, the entire marching routine suffered. Besides the obvious loss of musicality, it was easy to miss marching cues. The cues were a series of choreographed hand signals and whistle blasts. They told us when to move or stop, when to turn, and in what direction. The cues are necessary to execute various formations, like a football or a turkey.
The last time we missed our cues at a game, it was a disaster.
It was cold and windy. My fingers were sluggish, along with everyone else’s. We tried to play a quick, bright march just to warm up. But it sounded like music for a funeral procession. My improvised clip, holding new music I’d yet to learn, collapsed.
I broke out of my row, trying to grab the music as it sailed away. The wind picked up. More band members lost their music. Mr. Haines blasted his whistle frantically to bring us back to order. But we were too scattered already for that.
That’s when it started snowing . The snow grew heavy. The football game ended. And mercifully, so did our aborted performance.
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