A different drummer
“Don't it always seem to go. That you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone…” Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell
I haven’t been to a parade in years.
So why does it bother me that we won’t be having any this summer?
I suppose it’s the same reason I feel that little pang of regret to hear they stopped making the car I didn’t drive, the product I quit buying and were closing the store I hadn’t been to for ages. It seems as I got older the sun got hotter, the noise got louder, and it became easier and easier just to pass up a parade.
‘Twasn’t always so. Time was I was a persistent peripatetic parade participant. For a time, if there were folks sweating in the middle of the street, I was likely to be among them.
They say habits start at an early age, and I doubt if I’d been more than a Bobcat Cub when our pack of blue-shirted boys was called upon to join in Caledonia’s annual Memorial Day parade. We’d assemble in the school playground, with the local police, volunteer fire, American Legion honor guard and red-coated high school band stepping off to lead the procession. The World War I vets, still hale as they approached retirement age, came next, followed by the dads and uncles who fought in WWII and Korea, scout troops of both genders, the Luther League, young Methodists, contingents from the Catholic schools, the Cadet Band and yours truly and my den mates. We all ended up at the city park for a properly somber service and then all adjourned to claim complementary soft-serve cones at Haugstad’s before heading out for family picnics or an afternoon on the river.
Parade marching became a serious summertime avocation several years later when Mr. Earp drafted me and an equally unmusical buddy into the high school marching band. I was assigned to play second bass drum: “When your right foot hits the ground, hit the drum with your right hand, When your left foot hits the ground, hit the drum with your left hand. Continue until you’re told to stop.”
Even I could do that.
“And hit it hard,” I was told. “Swing your arms wide and make that sucker boom!” To make that boom even boomier, we weren’t issued those puffy, pillowy drum beaters, but a pair of solid, hardwood clublettes the size and shape of a meal-sized turkey drumstick. Positioned in the perimeter file we were well positioned to show off a bit, giving a little twirl and spin at the apex of the swing – all the better to impress a sweet young thing who might be sitting on the curbside.
There was a distinct downside to bass drumming while on the march. It’s the bane of every band to follow the horses, but of all the sidestepping musicians, the bass drummers – whose view of the ground immediately ends no less than two and a half yards ahead have it the worst. It is the wise drummer who has calculated the number of paces to count off to avoid treading upon the evidence of an equine’s passing left directly in his path.
That summer the band traveled to all the village festivals in the area and Winona Steamboat Days was on the schedule. Typical of our luck, the parade organizers found a well-fed equestrian unit for us to follow, but, with eyes ahead of our shoes, we stepped off nonetheless.
It was an exceptional crowd, and local police were stationed at regular intervals to keep the crowd to the curb and give the units room to pass unimpeded. I recall a bevy of queen-lettes, all besashed and bathing suited, observing the procession having already traversed the route. I was doing my strutting, stick-twirling best to be impressive when I noticed the clarinetist, trumpeter and saxophone directly ahead sidestep a fresh peck of road apples in my path. Intent tracking the equine leftovers as they passed out of view, I failed to notice the police officer standing further out from the curb than perhaps was warranted and, at that moment, wise.
According to the snare drummer right behind me, I got him just below the gunbelt…