Statute of Limitations
I checked, and criminal exposure for the activity I am about to discuss has passed. Since none of the people involved give a hoot about public embarrassment….. Here we go!
David Pickler once told me that getting new resources, equipment, music, funding, etc… from the school system was problematic because we seemed to do so much with the little we had. We were so successful that the need for help was not as apparent as it should be. The competitive success came because the kids in our band were incredible and exceptional. Still, there were day-to-day needs that had to be filled and, without money, those needs were still there. Some of the kids developed a system of “Appropriation” that filled our needs as long as I was willing to not ask a whole lot of questions. Examples would be:
Before the storage building we have now, Shelby County Schools placed 2 small, very old, and repurposed portable buildings that had been condemned (yes – condemned) out near where the storage building is now. This was to serve to store uniforms, off season equipment, podiums, vermin, the “Beau Brady” museum of acquisition, and other stuff. They did not, however, provide any shelving or rods for hanging uniforms. A couple of the kids said they could rustle up some lumber and pipe and, sure enough, over the next week an impressive pile of building materials appeared next to the portables. We all met one Saturday to outfit the portables with shelves and the like. At some point during the day, I heard one kid tell another that the secret to “appropriating” what we needed was to not take too much from one place. Feeling rather like Capt. Obvious, it was at that point that it occurred to me to notice all of the new house construction going on next to the school. I thought it better not to ask.
Every day, I would have to load up yard line markers, paint, chalk, speaker and microphone, or some such paraphernalia, and move it over to the grass area under the powerlines (TVA easement) for practice. Flipping water moccasins back into the ditch was also a chore….. but I digress. One day, an enterprising young man said, “Mr. Smith, what you need is a grocery cart to roll that junk in.” The next day, a grocery cart appeared in the band room. Missing from the cart was the plastic handle cover that I suspect once said “Kroger”. I thought it better not to ask.
Every teacher is assigned a short filing cabinet and a desk. If you were lucky, you would sometimes be gifted a second filing cabinet. One day, I complained out loud to some band folks helping clean and organize the band room that life would surely be easier if we had “a few more filing cabinets”. Keep in mind that I would regularly requisition them at the beginning of the year, only to be told that I could not get them. A few days after complaining, I came into the band room to find 3, brand new, 4-drawer file cabinets. The note on one of them said, “Please don’t thank the school for these – they might not understand!” Coincidentally, I found out later that week that the school board had delivered new filing cabinets. I found this out when a smiling plant manager delivered my 1 NEW CABINET. Had he looked in the music library he would have been very surprised. Though it was obvious to me that he had no idea I was now the owner of 4 new cabinets, I thought it better not to ask.
Kevin Moore (may he rest in peace), Tom Mason, Alex Ertz and Richard Brown would probably like me to state, for the record, that they know nothing of these sorts of endeavors. They probably would…… I thought it better not to ask!
