By Maylon Rice
It is always this time of the year, I wake up (at age 61 now, Yikes!) with the un-natural fear that I am late for band practice.
Yes, Lumberjack Marching Band practices.
I am panicked, it is almost 5:45 a.m. in the semi-darkness when I wake up and I have the constant fear that can I make it by the 6 a.m. roll call.
So I recall hurling myself in my 1962 Chevy truck down Cherry Street along the Westside of Warren High’s complex to the ramshackle band room. I am going break neck speed double-clutching the quick shifting that poor old tired four speeds Chevy for all she was worth.
You can’t be late.
There are dreaded demerits at stake.
Already cars, trucks, bikes and a few motorcycles are line out on both sides of Cherry Street.
The only light shine from the double doors of the old band room – a combination of a pair of war surplus shacks cobbled together by the Warren High School Board’s effort to have a free standing band room just across the street from the tiny house where Curry and Mary Lou Martin, and their three children, Curry III (Marty), Shelly and Lucinda all lived.
The porch light on the Martin’s residence flicks on. Now I am in a footrace with Curry Martin and his Safari style pitch helmet and ever present press-board clip board to see if I can squeeze past him into one of the two separate doors to the band room, before he does.
Once inside, Martin immediately pops up on the elevated conductor’s platform between these two doors and begins a terse alphabetical roll call.
I am so glad my last name (how to addressed 99% of the band members) begins down the alphabet. If there is no “here” or “present” after he calls your name – an eerie silence follows with the scratching of an “X” on this clipboard by his every present mechanical pencil from his shirt pocket.
So I scurry into one of the side rooms (practice rooms and music storage) to search for my wet, grass and lime striping stained tennis shoes.
After finding one in a pile of penny loafers, worn out Chuck Taylor high-tops and some discarded lace up shoes, I find the missing shoe for my pair.
Often I have gone out to 6 a.m. marching band practice with one of my shoes and heaven’s knows whose other shoe I was wearing.
As roll call is being conducted, mimeographed instructions of our newest marching routines are being disseminated by the like of band leaders like Wayne Warren, Kerry Pennington, Charlie Reynolds, Blake Marsh, Wallace Marsh, Johnny McBee, Marty Martin, the late Bill Brown and a flurry of others.
The sheets read to the novice like a CIA code.
There are lines, diagrams, X’s on the sheet with numbers and letters. We will spend the next few weeks marching and drilling with these uniquely mathematical and design sheets measuring each step and in which direction you are to travel in a five-minute, 30 second band halftime show.
Early on in the 6 a.m. practice as the sun comes up, we file outside stand on the WHS Lumberjack practice field (in front of the old weight lifting gym building and behind the band room). And get our pre-dawn bearings.
The ground is so hard packed with our constant marching and later in the day two sessions of gridders blocking and tackling one another further compressing the soils hardness and grave-like appearance, it is like being out on Cherry Street.
We only march on the old O. O. Axley Field about a week before our first football game – not one minute before.
After the first week of marching practice we drilled out motions with those sheets in our hands. And there were always instructions yelled by Martin and his assistants to keep us in line. But if we got out of sync, well….
Out comes the whistle.
He tweets us every so many beats or steps as if to the music we will play later as we march.
Somehow over the years, the band practices have been limited to outside horn play until the 9 a.m. hour.
We drill for 90 minutes, about 6:30 to 8 a.m. when there is a mad scramble to available cars, truck, motorcycles and bikes to the nearest Wag-A-Bag (near the Kroger) or downtown to Wayne’s for anything you could eat, drink in less than 30 minutes and be back to the band room.
We often left the marching field in those cruddy muddy shoes or often shedding the shoes at the cars to be barefoot on our quest for a soda pop break.
Back in the band room, at 9 a.m. - out came the instruments. With some help from Ricky Green and Gene Reynolds, I have cobbled together a list of the John Phillip Sousa-type tunes the WHS Marching Lumberjacks played in the half-time show.
I could only remember “British Eighth,” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” complete with the excellent piccolo solo by Lou Ann Reep and Regina Reep Jr., if the memory of this tune served me well today.
Other marching songs included: “King Size,” “Americans, We.” “The Washington Post March,” “Semper Fidelis,” “King Cotton,” “El Capitan.” “The Thunderer” filled the halftime menu.
Also, Gene Reynolds, pointed out we played “Ace High,” one year. It was, a new movie tune hit. Warren High has the march music first over such rival schools as Camden Fairview, Muscle Shoals, Ala., and others in the marching band world as the song was transcribed and picked up by ear from the one and only Marty Martin.
On the next Pastime, I’ll detail the switching of the school’s fight song and music we played in that terrific band stand at the north end of the stands in the old Axley field.
It is always this time of the year, I wake up (at age 61 now, Yikes!) with the un-natural fear that I am late for band practice.
Yes, Lumberjack Marching Band practices.
I am panicked, it is almost 5:45 a.m. in the semi-darkness when I wake up and I have the constant fear that can I make it by the 6 a.m. roll call.
So I recall hurling myself in my 1962 Chevy truck down Cherry Street along the Westside of Warren High’s complex to the ramshackle band room. I am going break neck speed double-clutching the quick shifting that poor old tired four speeds Chevy for all she was worth.
You can’t be late.
There are dreaded demerits at stake.
Already cars, trucks, bikes and a few motorcycles are line out on both sides of Cherry Street.
The only light shine from the double doors of the old band room – a combination of a pair of war surplus shacks cobbled together by the Warren High School Board’s effort to have a free standing band room just across the street from the tiny house where Curry and Mary Lou Martin, and their three children, Curry III (Marty), Shelly and Lucinda all lived.
The porch light on the Martin’s residence flicks on. Now I am in a footrace with Curry Martin and his Safari style pitch helmet and ever present press-board clip board to see if I can squeeze past him into one of the two separate doors to the band room, before he does.
Once inside, Martin immediately pops up on the elevated conductor’s platform between these two doors and begins a terse alphabetical roll call.
I am so glad my last name (how to addressed 99% of the band members) begins down the alphabet. If there is no “here” or “present” after he calls your name – an eerie silence follows with the scratching of an “X” on this clipboard by his every present mechanical pencil from his shirt pocket.
So I scurry into one of the side rooms (practice rooms and music storage) to search for my wet, grass and lime striping stained tennis shoes.
After finding one in a pile of penny loafers, worn out Chuck Taylor high-tops and some discarded lace up shoes, I find the missing shoe for my pair.
Often I have gone out to 6 a.m. marching band practice with one of my shoes and heaven’s knows whose other shoe I was wearing.
As roll call is being conducted, mimeographed instructions of our newest marching routines are being disseminated by the like of band leaders like Wayne Warren, Kerry Pennington, Charlie Reynolds, Blake Marsh, Wallace Marsh, Johnny McBee, Marty Martin, the late Bill Brown and a flurry of others.
The sheets read to the novice like a CIA code.
There are lines, diagrams, X’s on the sheet with numbers and letters. We will spend the next few weeks marching and drilling with these uniquely mathematical and design sheets measuring each step and in which direction you are to travel in a five-minute, 30 second band halftime show.
Early on in the 6 a.m. practice as the sun comes up, we file outside stand on the WHS Lumberjack practice field (in front of the old weight lifting gym building and behind the band room). And get our pre-dawn bearings.
The ground is so hard packed with our constant marching and later in the day two sessions of gridders blocking and tackling one another further compressing the soils hardness and grave-like appearance, it is like being out on Cherry Street.
We only march on the old O. O. Axley Field about a week before our first football game – not one minute before.
After the first week of marching practice we drilled out motions with those sheets in our hands. And there were always instructions yelled by Martin and his assistants to keep us in line. But if we got out of sync, well….
Out comes the whistle.
He tweets us every so many beats or steps as if to the music we will play later as we march.
Somehow over the years, the band practices have been limited to outside horn play until the 9 a.m. hour.
We drill for 90 minutes, about 6:30 to 8 a.m. when there is a mad scramble to available cars, truck, motorcycles and bikes to the nearest Wag-A-Bag (near the Kroger) or downtown to Wayne’s for anything you could eat, drink in less than 30 minutes and be back to the band room.
We often left the marching field in those cruddy muddy shoes or often shedding the shoes at the cars to be barefoot on our quest for a soda pop break.
Back in the band room, at 9 a.m. - out came the instruments. With some help from Ricky Green and Gene Reynolds, I have cobbled together a list of the John Phillip Sousa-type tunes the WHS Marching Lumberjacks played in the half-time show.
I could only remember “British Eighth,” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” complete with the excellent piccolo solo by Lou Ann Reep and Regina Reep Jr., if the memory of this tune served me well today.
Other marching songs included: “King Size,” “Americans, We.” “The Washington Post March,” “Semper Fidelis,” “King Cotton,” “El Capitan.” “The Thunderer” filled the halftime menu.
Also, Gene Reynolds, pointed out we played “Ace High,” one year. It was, a new movie tune hit. Warren High has the march music first over such rival schools as Camden Fairview, Muscle Shoals, Ala., and others in the marching band world as the song was transcribed and picked up by ear from the one and only Marty Martin.
On the next Pastime, I’ll detail the switching of the school’s fight song and music we played in that terrific band stand at the north end of the stands in the old Axley field.
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