Thursday, November 26, 2015
I haven't watched a holiday parade on TV in ages, so I didn't realize how coverage of the parades has changed. I love marching bands, especially high school bands, military bands, and police/fire department bands. I love the sound and the precision.
10:20 We're 20 minutes into the NYC parade, and I'm getting very frustrated. CBS is showing every balloon and every advertising float, but every time a marching band comes down the street they cut away to reporters nattering to each other or to somebody who has something to sell, or to commercials. There have already been a jillion commercials.
And what's with these stage shows? What do they have to do with a parade?
I am disgusted.
10:25 Whoa! They just showed a high school band! Well, a little of it. They were moving FAST -- almost trotting.
10:35 I wish the reporters would just SHUT UP!
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All of this reminds me of my high school band experience.
The school I graduated from went from kindergarten to 12th grade in the one building, and there was a total of about 200 kids altogether. Of that, about 80 were in high school (we were top-heavy because there were a few small Catholic schools that went up to eighth grade), and of that 80, about half were in the marching band.
There was one other school in the northern reaches of the county, but they didn't have a marching band, just a small concert band, so we represented the county in all parades in all surrounding counties. We won almost all competitions because we were the only band that actually played while marching. All the others had to stop to play. The uniforms were red pants and jackets with gold braid and bucket hats.
And then it all changed.
In my junior year, the county announced that they were consolidating the two public schools, and building a new facility for the junior and senior high school classes ... which didn't seem to make a lot of sense to a lot of people because that meant some kids would be on the school bus for at least an hour each way, twice a day. My class was going to be the last to graduate from our old school.
Also, somewhere in that period, the old music teacher retired, and we got a new woman.
She decided that the old uniforms with pants were not appropriate for the females in the band, so she ordered expensive new white wool skirts and jackets for the girls, with red berets ... which didn't make a lot of sense since no one knew what the colors for the new school would be, and both bands would have to consolidate somehow, and with the boys in red and the girls in white, we lost the uniformity. Plus, most of the parades were in the winter, and up there on the plateau it was COLD, often below zero, and the girls' legs froze. (We majorettes were in skirts, but we at least could keep constantly moving.)
Something else that didn't make any sense, they stopped recruiting new members into the band. The excuse we were given was the consolidation, but we all knew that the real reason was that the new music teacher didn't know how to teach any instrument beyond her beloved violin. So over the next two years as members graduated, the band got smaller and smaller.
Plus, and this was the absolute worst, she changed the (I don't know the word for it) pace we marched to. She decided we had to quick-step, apparently the latest fad. Which meant we could no longer play while marching.
We all, kids and parents, hated her. But I guess being a small school in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, she was the best they could get.
We still won competitions, though, because without discussing it with her, the band whistled our old playlist as they marched. She didn't like it, but she couldn't stop them.
My senior year we were down to three majorettes. Sandra and Sharon and me. Sandra and Sharon were tall, and I was short, so the teacher decided I should be the drum major, out in front with the big silver whistle and the bucket hat with the tall feathered plume. I was so short the plume looked silly, so that was ditched. But I got to blow the whistle for stops and turns and roll-off. That was fun.
So, my class, the "last class from Turnpike High", graduated. Over the next summer, the brand new building that everyone was supposed to be moving into, collapsed. The foundation crumbled. It was a complete loss. It turned out someone had been siphoning off the construction money, and all the cement and concrete was mostly sand.
Nobody was surprised.
.
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Saturday, August 13, 2011
3331 Color
Saturday, August 13, 2011
I'm reading a book now wherein the events take place in the early '60s in the south. I had forgotten how it was then. Weird.
It was a tradition in my tiny Pennsylvania mountain high school that the senior class took a trip (after the graduation ceremony but before the diplomas were given out, to ensure that no one got too wild on the trip), a ten day bus tour of Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Richmond, and points south, which included a tour of a cigarette factory, Luray Caverns, Skyline Drive, Natural Bridge, and some dead presidents' homes (Washington and Jefferson).
I'm not sure who paid for it. I know that few of the families of the kids in my class could have ponied up the money, and I remember only one class money-raising scheme wherein we sold light bulbs until the local shopkeeper objected that we were taking away his business. But back then, who paid for what was not something I thought about a lot.
Those kids, being mountain folk, behaved well on the trip. The only chaperone for the 30 of us was our homeroom teacher and his (or her) spouse, also traditional. Even our "hoods" were good. The only time anyone got out of line was when we stayed one night at a motel with a decent pool, and we all broke curfew for a midnight swim.
Anyway, back to "how it was then".
The graduating class before us, Obie's class, 1961, had the only African-American kid in the school, Rosetta, the daughter of a sergeant on the base. When they found out that on the traditional tour, Rosetta would not be allowed to eat at the same counters or dining rooms, or stay in the same lodgings, let alone share a room with other girls in the class, the class voted to change the itinerary. Instead of Virginia and North Carolina, they'd go to Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and points between, and they were all excited about it.
Only one catch. Rosetta was not excited about it. She wanted the southern tour, and refused to go if they were going northeast. I don't know what she was thinking. That she wanted to make this her personal Freedom Riders bus, or that she didn't understand that it would be much more difficult to coordinate and much more expensive? With Rosetta, either was possible. Anyway, with that Catch-22, the class ended up going north-east, without Rosetta. There were a lot of people who were very angry about it.
So, the next year, it's our turn.
I don't think anyone other than me in my class of 30 had ever been out of the county, let alone stayed in a hotel. Of the 30 of us, I think there were maybe four or five who had indoor bathrooms, and three who had a real furnace. Most had woodstoves for heat and cooking, and bathed once a week in a steel tub in the kitchen. They ate a lot of game.
I know now that we stayed in some of the rattiest hotels and motels ever. Green scum on the pools (if they had one), paper peeling off the walls, mold in the bathrooms. And we ate in places with cracked and curling linoleum floors. But back then, for most of those kids, it was luxury.
One place we stayed somewhere in southern Virginia was billed as a resort. It was perched on the edge of a cliff. Coming up the drive it looked beautiful, three stories, with a two-story portico with tall fluted columns and spreading curving steps, and leaded glass doors. The bus driver went around the back, and parked at a two-story wing with peeling paint, and rickety stairs up to a tilting balcony. That's where our rooms were. The dining room was on the ground floor, cafeteria steam tables, peeling linoleum floor, Formica tables with napkins under the feet to keep them level. I think we stayed there two nights.
At one point, the boys decided to explore. There was a door at the end of the upstairs hall. We opened it, onto a hallway papered in white and gold flocking, with a double curved staircase with marble treads, and gilded banisters, and a crystal chandelier hanging down the middle. Below was a lobby with a marble fountain.
The door had opened in, so we were able to read the sign on it.
I suspect now that everywhere we stayed, everywhere we ate, we were in the colored accommodations. Oddly, there were never any other guests wherever we went. We always had the whole place to ourselves.
I don't know if that was true of every trip every year, or if it was just the reaction of the tour company to the previous year's fiasco. "Ok, you want to play that game? We'll fix you."
Interesting to think about it now.
About the differences.
Interesting to think about traveling with The Man. Then or now.
He does get nervous in Virginia, oddly more nervous than when we were in Florida or the Carolinas.
Interesting how we forget. Some of us, anyhow. Some of us don't.
--------------------------------
I found out what the "whoop whoop" sound is that I hear so often at random times. It sounded so much like a ship that I thought maybe it had something to do with a drawbridge. Turns out it's the emergency "siren", for the fire department and EMS folks. The number and pattern of whoops indicates which area is being alerted.
.
“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
-- Terry Pratchett --
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Terry Pratchett --
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm reading a book now wherein the events take place in the early '60s in the south. I had forgotten how it was then. Weird.
It was a tradition in my tiny Pennsylvania mountain high school that the senior class took a trip (after the graduation ceremony but before the diplomas were given out, to ensure that no one got too wild on the trip), a ten day bus tour of Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Richmond, and points south, which included a tour of a cigarette factory, Luray Caverns, Skyline Drive, Natural Bridge, and some dead presidents' homes (Washington and Jefferson).
I'm not sure who paid for it. I know that few of the families of the kids in my class could have ponied up the money, and I remember only one class money-raising scheme wherein we sold light bulbs until the local shopkeeper objected that we were taking away his business. But back then, who paid for what was not something I thought about a lot.
Those kids, being mountain folk, behaved well on the trip. The only chaperone for the 30 of us was our homeroom teacher and his (or her) spouse, also traditional. Even our "hoods" were good. The only time anyone got out of line was when we stayed one night at a motel with a decent pool, and we all broke curfew for a midnight swim.
Anyway, back to "how it was then".
The graduating class before us, Obie's class, 1961, had the only African-American kid in the school, Rosetta, the daughter of a sergeant on the base. When they found out that on the traditional tour, Rosetta would not be allowed to eat at the same counters or dining rooms, or stay in the same lodgings, let alone share a room with other girls in the class, the class voted to change the itinerary. Instead of Virginia and North Carolina, they'd go to Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and points between, and they were all excited about it.
Only one catch. Rosetta was not excited about it. She wanted the southern tour, and refused to go if they were going northeast. I don't know what she was thinking. That she wanted to make this her personal Freedom Riders bus, or that she didn't understand that it would be much more difficult to coordinate and much more expensive? With Rosetta, either was possible. Anyway, with that Catch-22, the class ended up going north-east, without Rosetta. There were a lot of people who were very angry about it.
So, the next year, it's our turn.
I don't think anyone other than me in my class of 30 had ever been out of the county, let alone stayed in a hotel. Of the 30 of us, I think there were maybe four or five who had indoor bathrooms, and three who had a real furnace. Most had woodstoves for heat and cooking, and bathed once a week in a steel tub in the kitchen. They ate a lot of game.
I know now that we stayed in some of the rattiest hotels and motels ever. Green scum on the pools (if they had one), paper peeling off the walls, mold in the bathrooms. And we ate in places with cracked and curling linoleum floors. But back then, for most of those kids, it was luxury.
One place we stayed somewhere in southern Virginia was billed as a resort. It was perched on the edge of a cliff. Coming up the drive it looked beautiful, three stories, with a two-story portico with tall fluted columns and spreading curving steps, and leaded glass doors. The bus driver went around the back, and parked at a two-story wing with peeling paint, and rickety stairs up to a tilting balcony. That's where our rooms were. The dining room was on the ground floor, cafeteria steam tables, peeling linoleum floor, Formica tables with napkins under the feet to keep them level. I think we stayed there two nights.
At one point, the boys decided to explore. There was a door at the end of the upstairs hall. We opened it, onto a hallway papered in white and gold flocking, with a double curved staircase with marble treads, and gilded banisters, and a crystal chandelier hanging down the middle. Below was a lobby with a marble fountain.
The door had opened in, so we were able to read the sign on it.
Colored
I suspect now that everywhere we stayed, everywhere we ate, we were in the colored accommodations. Oddly, there were never any other guests wherever we went. We always had the whole place to ourselves.
I don't know if that was true of every trip every year, or if it was just the reaction of the tour company to the previous year's fiasco. "Ok, you want to play that game? We'll fix you."
Interesting to think about it now.
About the differences.
Interesting to think about traveling with The Man. Then or now.
He does get nervous in Virginia, oddly more nervous than when we were in Florida or the Carolinas.
Interesting how we forget. Some of us, anyhow. Some of us don't.
--------------------------------
I found out what the "whoop whoop" sound is that I hear so often at random times. It sounded so much like a ship that I thought maybe it had something to do with a drawbridge. Turns out it's the emergency "siren", for the fire department and EMS folks. The number and pattern of whoops indicates which area is being alerted.
.
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