The Band Years

My Grandfather, who I call Pipa, is a great musician. He never became famous or anything but he could play about any song he heard. He owns an accordion and a piano. That accordion was very heavy to me as a young child so I never was able to put it on and have him teach me to play it. I always wanted to though.

Pipa pushed Mom into playing the saxophone but she could never get it to make a sound. In Princeton, when I was in the sixth grade, Mom discovered they were teaching music. She asked me if I would like to learn to play a musical instrument. I wasn't sure so she said, sign up and tell them you want to play the Alto Saxophone. The first few days were interesting but I saw no instrument. After that we were given the mouth parts of our instruments to blow into. I learned how to use a ligature to hold the reed to the mouth piece and how to hold my mouth to make a sound come out of it. After that, we learned how to put it all together. We played our first song a few days later, "Mary Had a Little Lamb". I had no problem making sound come out of that horn. I decided I liked making music and would keep playing. My parents and grandparents were very excited about it.

When we moved from Princeton and started school in Blue Ridge, there was no band class. I began playing sports. I tried out for the football team. Keep in mind, I am a little scrawny kid; nothing but skin and bones. The coach puts me in at slot back or some such thing. He wants me to run the football up the middle. I do this and get tackled and somehow I land on the ball and it knocks the breath out of me. This happened twice and I was very frustrated. Had he put me at wide receiver, he would have had a much better player. I guess he already had those slots filled. Anyway, I didn't like football much, at least not at school. I loved playing it with my family. The season changed and I was able to try out for basketball. I have always been dexterous and the coach was very impressed with my ball handling skills. He was also impressed with my defense skills. I could steal the ball by waiting for my opponent to dribble and slap the ball toward me. I remember one game I was hitting my baskets and scored the most points. Our team won the championship that year and I forgot about music.

When we moved to Lake Tawakoni and I went to Rains ISD, I found that there was a band. I also found out that I could not play basketball and music at the same time. I was frustrated, and I'm not sure how, but I was able to play basketball and music one year. I found myself liking band more though and never played school sports again.

As a freshman, we had a great concert/jazz teacher. We played Lionel Richie's "Hello" among others. As a sophomore, I believe we got a new teacher. He liked military style and we played march songs. He put us all out on parking lot and drilled into us marching techniques and gave us our route on the field while we played our marching music.

Around the end of my sophomore year, I started looking around me at the beautiful young women in the band. I have always been very shy but something in me changed and I started interacting and having fun with them. Our entire band was full of beautiful young women. They were great musicians too. Beth, Carrin, Toni, Jean Ann, and Shana played flute, Michelle played flute and piccolo, Laura and Lauren played alto saxophone (Laura was first chair, I was second, Laura also played oboe), Jennifer, Teresa, and Delia played clarinet, Lana played tenor saxophone, Tracy played bass clarinet next to my friend Frank. I'm pretty sure I left some out and I apologize to those I did.

I dated two of the girls in the band for very short periods. One I had a big crush on but I was so shy that she eventually lost interest. We had a band lock-in one time and there were all kinds of things to do. I had this girl all to myself on a racket ball court and was in the right position and the right moment but I was so afraid to kiss her. I still kick myself over that. The other girl flirted with me all the time and I was clueless. Jean Ann decided to take matters into her own hands and try to set the girl and I up. So we dated but I was just too shy/afraid to ever kiss. One day, while out with friends and while dating the girl who was not there, I was flirted with by a girl who would become my high school sweet heart. Right before the night ended, a light bulb came on and I noticed she had been flirting with me the whole night. So I started flirting back and before you know it we were kissing. I broke up with the band girl after that and dated Angela who was in the drill team from then on. We had a great drill team that performed with the band as well. I believe we all did real well in band competitions but I can't remember what awards we received. I just remember great times with my friends making music, dancing in the stands, and goofing off in the band hall.