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| From
the September/October 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine Trouble Spots
So why was I so hard on music teachers? Mr. Kelly was my target — a talented teacher and musician with less patience than he might have needed to deal with me and my junior high friends. Kelly was a John Phillip Sousa sort of music director, military in his approach. When he strode into the gymnasium for chorus three mornings a week and struck middle C as if his finger were a gavel, he expected immediate silence. When he struck it again, we’d best be humming it. I wondered what Kelly would do if one day he struck middle C with all that authority and nothing happened. As long as you’re headed for trouble, you might as well go all the way, right? If you keep it below felony status, there’s only so much they can do to you, and the truth is we get away with things more than fifty percent of the time. Chorus class was first period. Fifteen minutes ahead of time, Jackie Craig and I enter the gym. I open the back of the piano and tell Jackie to hit middle C so I can see which hammer will strike which string. I place my four-week-old, never-been-washed jockstrap between the two and close the top. The bell rings; Jackie and I take our places on the top row of the bleachers and watch them fill below us. The gym door opens and Kelly strides in, stands at attention, and brings his finger down on middle C. Nothing. The choir quiets like Pavlov’s dogs when we see his arm come down, but in the absence of a tone, the buzz returns. Kelly strikes the key again. No reverberation comes forth. He walks to the back of the piano. He opens the lid, feels the crusty jock, and, instinctively, brings it out. Were Kelly a stand-up comic, this would be his big punch line. He is not. It is not. You could take Kelly’s pulse in the vein in his forehead from the back bleachers, and he is staring at me like an army sniper. This prank has Chris Crutcher written all over it. But it’s written in invisible ink. No can prove. For the rest of the period, Kelly glares daggers. The moment the bell rings, he does a quick about-face and marches out. And leaves the jockstrap on the back of the piano. “Mr. Kelly, something’s wrong with my horn.” It’s the last period of the day; Peggy Ross can’t make her baritone sound right. “It’s muffled,” she says. Kelly says, “Blow harder.” “I did. Something’s wrong.” Kelly approaches, takes Peggy’s horn, and blows. She’s right; it’s muffled. He reaches inside the horn . . . to the elbow . . . to the shoulder . . . around the bend. He must know; touch has its own memory. But there’s nothing he can do but bring it out. Band members will see. Band members will laugh. Crutcher’s Raiders 2, Kelly 0. It’s eleven-thirty Pee Emm. My father, chairman of the board of Cascade School District No. 42, has just returned from a meeting, having stopped off at the Chief Club for a quick one with Mr. Kelly, who has brought some “issues” before the board that my father wanted to continue talking about over a vodka and tonic. My father’s hand is on my shoulder; he’ll see me downstairs. Mr. Kelly, it seems, suspects that some recent shenanigans at school may have my mark on them. They have to do with, among other things, hygiene. My father is six-five, two-fifty; he won’t hit you, but he blocks out the sun. Should Mr. Kelly find one more piece of sweaty athletic apparel in or around any of his band instruments from now until the end of the year — nay, until the end of my life — I will wear said apparel like a surgeon’s mask for a week. Do I understand? I understand. Is that enough said? More than. Mr. Kelly enjoys a problem-free final quarter.
From the September/October 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine |
love music. I listened to Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians sing Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder back in the late forties and early fifties on those 78 rpm records that weighed about twelve pounds apiece. On radio until I was in the fifth grade, and on television after that, I couldn’t wait for “The Hit Parade” each Saturday night.
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