TRADITIONS !!!

            The President of the United States pardons a turkey every Thanksgiving.  People strip near naked and jump into freezing water, on purpose, for “polar bear” plunges.  Cousins of these same people go to Spain to run through the streets with angry bulls.  The fact that some events happen enough times to actually become a tradition is mindboggling. 

            Many, but not necessarily all of the band traditions at Houston, are less dangerous than running with the bulls.  Putting pennies in shoes, the Rooster Cheer, playing “Louie, Louie” as the first song at every game, hearing trumpets chant “I love being a trumpet” on a hot asphalt parking lot and some sort of senior prank are a few non-lethal traditions that come to mind.  Some traditions were created out of my incompetence.  The misspelling of names in concert programs was almost always an accident.  Some of you may remember a concert program with EVERY name misspelled except one.  That student’s mom had complained about her daughter’s name being spelled incorrectly in the Christmas program so for the Pajama Concert I intentionally spelled her name correctly and everyone else’s wrong.  The Pajama Concert itself was born out of my irritation with a parent complaining about the ending time of our concerts cutting into her child’s sleep time.  I reasoned that if her kid was already dressed for bed it would speed up the sleeping process.  I am nothing if not caring (sarcasm/off).

            Some traditions had to be stopped.  It used to be that every freshman would be caught at some point during their first week of school and have an “F” drawn on their forehead.  This was a school-wide thing.  I would not allow band kids to do this to other band kids so, for the first week or so of school, all of my freshmen would hang out in the band room as close to me as possible.  The school eventually put a stop to the practice.  During my first year at Houston, we tried to start a tradition of marching in to ballgames with the mascot of the opposing team suspended from a noose at the front of the line.  Believe it or not, the noose was not the issue (different and less politically correct times).  Our first game was against the ECS Eagles and the parrot that once hung (still?) in my office for 25 years was what we hung from the noose.  We used a red devil for Germantown and a stuffed dragon for Collierville.  All of the details were handled by my trombone players.  All was well until we played at Millington.  I am at the back of the line when John Clayton, our principal, comes to me, points to the front of the line, and says, “Do something now with that bunch of idiots”.  I ran to the front of the line and saw the noose with a small box hanging from it.  You see we were playing the Millington Trojans.  If you don’t get it, ask a friend.  None-the-less, that was the last time for that particular tradition as we decided to practice “safe traditions” from then on.

            I look upon our “The Houston Band” logo as sort of a tradition.  How it came about is a bit unusual.  When I came to Houston our logo was a running horse jumping over a music staff and we were referred to as the “Mustang Band”.  I hated the name and would have us announced at ballgames as “The Houston High School Marching Band”.  The announcer would inevitably substitute Mustang for Marching.  At about the same time, a very famous brothel in Nevada was closed and it’s assets auctioned off.  The “Mustang Ranch” was its name.  One of my dads came to me with a bit of information I did not have.  It seems the name of the Mustang Ranch’s house band was……… (wait for it)………. The Mustang Band.  He wanted to purchase the neon sign that hung above where the band played and give it to us to put up in the band room.  Even I realized this was a bad idea on so many levels but I used the prospect of signage as well as the previous existence of the Mustang Band moniker to leverage a change of name and logo.  Forevermore “The Houston Band”.

PS.  Donating to The Houston Band Foundation is a nice tradition to start.

WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE !

            It might not have been a submarine, but it did feel at times like we all lived right on top of each other.  Like with most families, being in constant close proximity led to a familiarity that is certainly not duplicated in English or algebra class.  When you can tell who has been in your office by the stuff they leave behind (origami cranes = Hannah Lin) or, even worse, by the smell they leave behind (stinky Asian Tupperware = Gloria Kwak), you are probably pretty familiar with each other.  In the days before the band room was expanded, it was a certainty that you would be in someone’s space no matter where you were.  Because of this, I saw you at your best and at your worst and occasionally…. I saw you, to some degree, naked.

            Yep, I have way too many of these stories and thought I would share a couple of them since it is a bit harder to fire me now that I have retired.  I could change the names to protect those involved but what is the fun in that?  Having read this far, there are some of you who just got a knot in your stomach in anticipation.  So…..

            Please understand that it is very hard to communicate sarcasm through a closed door.  I say that to give this first young lady some semblance of an excuse for what happened.  I, of course, was totally innocent.  It would seem that Allison Acker asked to use my office to try on a new drum major uniform.  I said sure and she went in to change.  Also, in her defense, the door would not lock since that little closet I used for an office was never intended to be an office.  I was to be the door guard.

Almost immediately after she went in (or so it seemed to me), I remembered something I needed off my desk.  I knocked on the door and said, “Can I come in?”  Allison replied, “Sure, come right on in!”  What she meant was, “You idiot, I’m changing clothes and you are not funny at all.”  I failed to pick up on the sarcasm and marched right on in to catch her half dressed (or half undressed).  Allison was much less panicked than me and said in a calm, collected voice, “You can leave now.” This sticks out mostly because she was so calm and I was so flustered.  I’ll bet that calmness has translated into the makings of a great mom.

            Not only is this next one not my fault, I never even saw anyone naked.  I did however keep everyone (police included) from seeing some of my kids in a less than dressed condition.  We were having our annual Rock-a-thon in the P.E. gym.  That year, we were having it in January.  It started to snow outside, but because of the “5 minutes off an hour” rule and also because I did not want wet, cold kids in rocking chairs for the rest of the night, I told them they could not go out in the snow.  As I understand it, the dare these girls came up with was born out of frustration because I would not let anyone go outside. 

What they decided to do was to strip to their underwear, run out the band room door closest to the flagpole, run around the flagpole, come back in, dress, and return to the rock-a-thon with the rest of us none the wiser.  The leader of this group of 3 was Renee Riley assisted by Katie Sauer and one other (a Lewis maybe?).  After the 5 minute break was finished, I counted heads and discovered the 3 of them missing.  Kevin was asleep as usual so I went looking for them.  When I went into the band room, I saw 3 piles of clothes on the floor.  While pondering this, someone banged on the outside door and said (screamed), “Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Help!”  When I got to the door, all I could see was Renee Reyle’s face.  The door had evidently closed and locked when they went out, stranding them semi-naked at 28 degrees.  She wanted me to unlock the door but then to leave the room so they could come back in.   I wanted an explanation but didn’t feel that while they were freezing was the best time to get one.  When they finally did get back to their rocking chairs and explained the plan to me, their biggest concern was not calling mom or dad.  Quite frankly, I didn’t want to call parents because it is hard to make the case that you are adequately taking care of their kids when the end result could have been frostbite and a ticket for indecent exposure.  I learned enough from this episode to post a parent at the exit doors for the next 18 or so years (Lonzi Pink’s mom for example).  Later, Renee would explain all of this as having really been my fault for not letting them go out and play in the snow.  The one advantage to a real submarine is that you can’t sneak out of it.

MAKING GOD LAUGH !!!

            I am convinced God has a sense of humor.  There are examples all around us:  the Puffer Fish, the Platypus, Matt Taylor’s physique.  It would not be a stretch to believe God lets us experience sudden distractions at the worst possible moment to amuse himself.  Sorta like, “Well Jim seems to be doing pretty good today, let’s throw him a curveball and see how he handles it!”  Those days always seem to be competition days.  You know, the day I am already in my best possible mood.  Small examples of these phenomena would include:

            I’m standing outside the Liberty Bowl. I am about to go up and change into the obligatory suit when some one runs up and says, “Mr. Smith, come quick, Christian Bahniuk is unconscious!”  That is never a good thing to hear an hour before warm up.  It seems that Christian had slipped in the restroom and hit her head on the concrete floor.  I got there about the same time as the paramedics and the stretcher.  She ended up surviving (she spent most of her time hitting on a cute EMT).  God chuckled.

            The bus for Dayton leaves in less than an hour going to the WGI World Drum Championships.  Eric Jackson (snare drummer) is horsing around outside the band room and breaks his leg.  No trip for Eric but, while I stomp around growling and muttering, God grins.

            We are in Dayton for WGI World Drum Championships and it is time to get in line to perform.  I send wonderful parents Vicki and Hal Schneider out to the truck to get the battery.  For those of you who do not know, the battery is everyone in a drum line that does not play in the front ensemble.  With time getting really tight, Hal comes back with the truck battery.  Really????.........   God snorts.

            I take the band to Jackson, TN to play in the West Tennessee Concert Festival (mid 1990’s).  When we start to unload, we discover that someone has left the music in my office at the school.  That someone is me.  God guffaws. 

            The most extreme example of this sort of thing happened coming home from one of our first victories in the Vanderbilt marching competition.  Parents give us their children to take out of town with the expectation that we will return safely with all of them.  Not long after leaving Nashville, I got a call from Mr. Wilson to tell me that they could not find Keith Hamilton and asking if he was on my bus.  He wasn’t, so we pulled over and searched all of the buses.  No Keith to be found.  We called his cell phone and got no answer.  One of his friends told me they had seen Keith talking with girls from Siegel at their bus just before we left.  Somewhere in here I called the Tennessee Highway Patrol and Keith’s parents.  His parents had not heard from him.  The Highway Patrol offered to send someone to Siegel High School to meet their buses in the event Keith had found a girl who would talk to him (a very unlikely scenario) and gotten on her bus.  Keith’s dad started back toward Vanderbilt from Germantown to look for Keith.  Eventually, we started for home. 

            When we pull up in the parking lot, Keith’s very distraught mom met us with no news of Keith.  I calmed her down as best I could and turned to go back and get my stuff off of the bus.  As I looked up, here comes Keith walking toward me, draped in a blanket and without a care in the world.  After throwing him in a headlock and taking him to his mom, I got this story.  It would seem that Keith, tired from all that talking with the girls from Siegel, had gotten on his bus in a different seat.  He had turned off his phone, covered himself up with a blanket, and gone to sleep.  Evidently no one looked under the blanket when they searched.  It took me a while to find the humor in what happened.  God, however, is still laughing.

BAD BUS, BAD BUS…… WHATCHA GONNA DO !

            A hallmark of any Spring band trip is how many times the bus breaks down.  It seemed to happen on almost every trip.  Now, I’m not saying that sitting on the side of the road or standing in a truck stop parking lot is all bad.  There were many instances of 50 on 50 Red Rover that are quite memorable (William Ingram).  I always looked on breaking down as a bonding experience – kind of a “Trial by Fire” sort of thing.  Sometimes you could tell by the driver’s body language how bad the situation was.  Usually, however, these experiences began with a loud noise from the back of the bus (engine) followed shortly by all the drivers gathered around an open engine compartment looking rather severe.  I came to realize that driving a bus does not mean you have any idea how to fix a bus or even how to diagnose what is wrong.  Any freshman flute player could have served the same purpose as the drivers at that moment.  Other things to note about breaking down include:

1.              If they give an estimate for how long it will take to get moving, double it.

2.              It is never okay to continue without air conditioning.  That “soup” sloshing around in the little room in the back gets ripe quickly.

3.              Drivers never want to call the company for help but want to stare at the bus hoping it will repair itself.  Make them call.

4.              Do not let kids call home with a new estimated arrival time until you have given the bus a chance to break down again.

            The gold standard in breaking down on a trip would have to be our first ever excursion to San Antonio.  Getting to San Antonio was no problem.  We were a smaller band back then (3 buses).  On Sunday morning, we loaded up to leave at 7:00 a.m. but did not get to leave because a bus broke down.  We were expecting it to be very hot in South Texas and air conditioning was not optional so we sat in the parking lot for well over an hour waiting on a new bus.  After unloading and reloading, we finally got on the road.  We made it Austin where we stopped for lunch.  When we loaded up after lunch, one of the buses had no air pressure and would not lift up off the ground.  After the required amount of staring from drivers, another new bus was sent from San Antonio, which took almost 3 hours of down time before we got moving again.  The plan was to drive as far as possible before pulling off for supper.  The lead bus (mine) had other plans and started making engine noise just as we entered Dallas. 

I failed to mention earlier that we were suffering under an additional handicap in that none of the drivers spoke English.  Because of this, it took longer than it should have to come up with a plan for what to do.  We eventually ended up at the Coach USA bus lot in Dallas – a grand name for a big dusty parking lot with a one-room shack in the middle.  The lot was empty except for a gleaming and obviously new bus parked right next to the “shack”.  After looking at my bus, the lot manager/mechanic said it was shot.  When I asked to load kids on the new bus, he said we could not have it as it was promised to a group the next morning.  His exact words were, “You aren’t getting THAT bus under any circumstance!”  At that moment, I was looking for any leverage I could find. 

JoAnna Tacker, band treasurer extraordinaire, was also an employee with Coach USA in Memphis.  Our first plan was to line everyone up to use the restroom in the little “shack” as it was obvious the manager did not want us there.  His solution was to sleep on the buses overnight in the parking lot and wait on a bus that was returning midmorning the next day.  I still wanted the new bus and hoped 150 folks using his bathroom one at a time would irritate him into releasing it.  Instead, my plan and something about my charm and calm demeanor caused him to get very upset.  JoAnna spent this time calling around and eventually located the President of Coach USA.  After she explained our day and the rudeness of the lot manager, he asked to speak with said manager.  The look on the manager’s face as he said, “Mr. Smith, I can have the new bus ready to go in 30 minutes,” was priceless.  At this point it is after 8 p.m. and the kids have not been fed.  The President of Coach USA offered up $1,500 for dinner so we took the kids to eat, loaded up, and headed home.

We pulled into the school parking lot at about 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning.  About half of the kids went home to sleep but about half splashed water on their face and went to second period.  The number of complaining phone calls I got from parents were zero.  Remember The Alamo!