If You Make It - We Can Break It

Underwriters Laboratories is that outfit that tests stuff and certifies that it will hold up when you use it.  “UL Tested” is stamped on lots of items and equipment you buy everyday.  I have often thought that the Houston Band could make a ton of money testing items to see if they will “Hold Up” to average (and in some cases severe or stupid) use.  The Houston Band could break a block of steel.  The first vibraphone we ever purchased was “accidentally” thrown out of the back of a moving pickup truck while we were moving it to the practice field which was, at that time, the baseball field.  Our first upright string bass was “accidentally” crushed by Michael Theuns as he moved it from room to room.  Crushed being defined as no pieces big enough to identify as coming from an upright bass.  We became so adept at breaking things that I began to give an award for it at the Band Banquet.  That award was named after Nadia Sifri and Nadia did not just break a piece of equipment…. She broke an entire hotel.

Nadia and her brother Tamim were in my first band at Houston.  Nadia would have been in the first graduating class but, shortly after the “incident”, they moved to California.  I did not think moving and destroying a hotel were connected.  Still, at the end of all of this I lost my best clarinet player and gained the following story:

            A group of us were staying in the Fairfield Inn in Jackson, TN for All West Band Clinic.  Our last night in the hotel, everything appeared to be going well.  I had stayed up to watch kids (in particular Russ Cardwell who needed lots of watching) and was on my third Brady Bunch rerun (think pre-cable / three channel television) when an alarm went off.  We were staying on the 4^th floor of a 4 story building.  As I started out to check on kids, a hotel manager met me to tell me to get everyone down to the parking lot.  It was the first weekend in February and this back in the day when that meant a real winter. It was quite cold.  Every guest in the hotel was in the parking lot grumbling about cold when I heard some of my girls complaining about having wet feet.  They said their floor was covered in water when they started down.  As it turns out, their room had flooded from an overflowing toilet. The water had run down between floors and shorted out electrical on floors 2 and 3.  We stood in the parking lot wrapped in blankets the hotel provided for a couple of hours while the damage was repaired and power restored.  I launched an investigation into who was responsible for “pottygate” and, after the girls huddled for a minute, Nadia walked over, tears in her eyes, and said, “I really had to pee!”.   Hotel management was convinced the toilet was somehow tampered with to make it overflow and, while we were allowed to spend that night, we were encouraged to stay elsewhere should we ever return to Jackson.  I offered to give him the pieces of a perfectly good vibraphone in exchange for the damage.  He was not amused.