BOY WITH A HORN

After a year of renting my golden horn a friend of my mom, who was in the antique business, gave me a silver cornet.  One that he attested had actually been used in the John Phillip Sousa Marine Band.  He was sure because it belonged to his dad who played it under the baton of the great march king.

This should have given me the motivation to succeed.  But after a year I was still just blatting through my lessons.

My grandmother enforced my half hour of practice before I could go out and play routine each afternoon.  Most times I would sit and just blow random notes occasionally turning a page in my lesson book in case she was watching.  I don't think my grandmother ever knew this scam - she never mentioned it, but then again, she was very cagey about me when I strayed from the straight and narrow.

The Bacon Elementary School band "played in and out" the students as they marched by grade to their weekly assembly, which usually entailed a long oration from our principal Mrs. McCorristin and a grainy movie about hygiene or which country exports tin. Principal Edith M. prowled the stage like a lioness alerting us, in her high warbling voice, to the dangers of running in the hall or disobeying our AAA Patrol Boys on the corners.

We usually gave the fidgeting audience a new number each week - I scammed this too.

Most times I just sat there with the horn to my mouth and pretended to play.  This was for two reasons.  One I was afraid I would make a mistake.  And two I was sure I would make a mistake and hit a sour note - therefore, I didn't hit any.  Every once in awhile the first trumpeter - a burly 8th grader would look over from his prime seat and say, "Hey Iszard give us a hand here, won't ja?"  I would blush and then continue faking it.

One day my mother informed me that it was time I moved up and took lessons off the number one music teacher in town.  The ancient Mr. Leski, retired big band professional.  I guess she thought this might spark my musical enthusiasm ?

My first lesson with him was so different. After brief introductions which focused on the fact that I had been "playing" for over a year, we began the $2 dollar torture. For one thing he didn't use a song book - he wrote out all of the music on small music sheets.  He gave me one and asked that I toot a "test" for him.  I will never forget trying to play "Home Sweet Home" in 3/4 time.

"NO...NO...NO, he wailed!  Timing my boy, it's all about timing"!

"You must put into you head these phrases; he wrote below the notes on my music.  GET IT - for half notes, SAN FRANSICO for quarter notes.  This will help you hold the notes the proper time for which they are written.  Here's how you should think 'Home Sweet Home' when you play the notes think:   Get it, get it, get it, San Francisco get it get it.

Get It?"

No I didn't get it.  But for the next two years I filled my repertoire, not with old standards, but with an array of musical mnemonics in hopes that I would someday gain a smidgen of rhythm = Result, to this day I still have no rhythm; ask my dance partners.

Fact my mom had to face  - I am not musical.

However, by the time I got to 8th grade and was anointed second, first trumpet - I was actually playing along with the band and enjoying it, to some extent - albeit our leader would occasionally caution me to play softer and not drown out the other 20 players.

After 8 years of trumpeting I graduated to Millville Memorial High School and went out for football that fall  - and never touched my horn again.  I limited my music to listening to the radio.

MUSIC LESSONS

For some reason (perhaps from an article in Ladies Home Journal) my mother got the idea that for me to be a well-rounded and cultured person I should play a musical instrument.  I would have rather played baseball but there was no arguing.  She had made up my mind on this.

But what to play was the key question?  One thing for sure a piano was out of the question.

So on a Saturday in the 8^th year of my journey through the vale of tears we took the bus to look at musical instruments at the Millville Music Center.  A center it was – record shop, sheet music, an array of rent to own instruments and in the rear of the small High Street shop were four small windowed rooms a bit bigger than phone booths used for music lessons.

We peered at the window display of instruments.  The sun bounced off the highly polished brass as I scanned the music making machines.  I imagined myself playing each one.  The saxophone – too many keys that had to be hard to play.  The trombone no keys that had to be hard too.  The clarinet looked sinister and not fun.  Ah, the trumpet – that had to be an easy one to play, just three keys. 

I blurted, “I think I would like to play the trumpet!”

We inquired within and the owner indicated that I should take a horn test first before we decide.  We were led to one of the practice rooms and told to wait for the teacher who would finish a lesson in a few moments.  Mom and I sat and listened to what seemed like the wailing of a mortally wounded alley cat from the room next to us.  When the lesson ended I saw it was a classmate of mine toting here new clarinet.

Mr. Mirentz, the Center’s one size fits all music teacher. came in our booth with the gleaming trumpet from the window.  He showed me how to hold it – it was pretty heavy I discovered.  He explained that trumpet players needed “lip” to play this wonderful instrument.  I had a lip and checked that off my list.  But then he added, this “lip” was called the embouchure - some have a good one – some don’t.  Some can make beautiful music and others never do.  He urged me to try to play a note.  I blew as hard as I could – but just a lot of air came out.   “No Cal it’s not about blowing,” he said. “It sort of like humming – you’ve got to make your upper lip buzz into the mouth piece.”  I tried again.  A rasping blatt erupted from the thing. 

“AGAIN!” he ordered. 

I tried again and a ragged, ear piercing sound came out. “He’s a natural!” he exclaimed.  And the die was cast.  My mother beamed with pride with visions of a classical virtuoso dancing in her head. 

Mom signed a rental form which indicated that $5 dollars a week would go to the price of owning this proud and ancient instrument.  She bought a music stand, my beginner's lesson manual and booked me for my first lesson the following Saturday. 

And for the next 7 days I practiced the one note I could muster - as every dog in the neighborhood bayed a duet with me.

A PHRASE IN TIME

(Editors note:  Mr. Bob Stutz a Masonic Brother, historian and good friend sent me this - and I like to share it with you.  These phrases stoke many a Millville Memory for me - sometimes just hearing one makes the gray cells dance - what do they spark for you?)

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We did our best to straighten up and fly right. Hubba-hubba! We’d cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and petting and smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some passion pit or lovers’ lane. Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! Holy Moley! We were “in like Flynn” and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy could not accuse us of being a knucklehead or a nincompoop. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back.

Like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”  We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape of our perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinder’s monkey.

Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone? Long time ago:  The milkman did it. Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread box. The very idea! It’s your nickel. Don’t forget to pull the chain or my finger. Knee high to a grasshopper. Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain. Domino theory. Fail safe. Civil defense. Fiddlesticks!  You look like the wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties. Going like sixty. I’ll see you in the funny papers. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! And Awa-a-ay we go!

Oh, my stars and garters! It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter had liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart’s deep core. But just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory.

 It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging. We can have our cake and eat it, too!

MANO A MANO

I was a big kid.  Many time mistaken for being “fat” -  I wasn’t really fat. But I did weight 190 in fourth grade.  “Big boned” my grandmother would say – she was always supportive and for her I could never be anything but handsome and a reminder of her father – who was also a big boned German. 

I had to buy clothes from the “Cubby” section in Frank’s Men & Boys store.  Being in that section made my face flush.   Frankly, being big was a burden that was far more than just being taller than everyone in my Bacon School class.

My size led to many bigger boys wanting to fight me. 

I was and continue to be - NOT  a “fighter” – I talk a good game, but have had two actual fist fights in my life.  The first was with Jay P. a second cousin, who called me "the wart hog" and was in sixth grade.  He had been after me on the playground every recess that fall of my 4^th grade year.   I will always remember hiding from him behind the girls jump rope cluster or over with the little kids by the monkey bars.  The worst part I was missing all the playground fun lurking around the whole period.  

This cat and mouse game went on until pimply Jay confronted me one morning right before we had to return to class. He grabbed me and said, “Hey fatso, want a smack in the mouth?”  His gang of greasy friends guffawed heartily. I just couldn’t take it anymore, even as the alarms went off in my head - “your mother will kill you if you get suspended for fighting.”  This the usual penalty for playground pugilism.

Just like one reads about at that boiling point of unbridled anger - I actually did see red that blotted out everything.

Then Jay tried his famous bear hug on me – I made a quick move to the side as he grabbed a bunch of air.  A move I saw watching wrestling on TV with my grandmother.  This was his undoing.  With a strong doze of adrenaline coursing through my veins and to my surprise - I picked Jay up (remember I out weighted this weasel by 40 pounds) and I easily tossed him against the school building wall. He bounced off it like a tennis ball and collapsed in a pile.  I prayed that I had not actually killed him.  He slowly go up - stunned.  His henchmen friends were stunned. 

I was really stunned!

Then he started to cry and gibberish came out of his mouth.  Was he speaking in tongues?  No!

I couldn’t believe it.  He was blubbering that he was sooo sorrrryyyy!  Sorry?  Sorry that I hurled him at least five feet in the air.  I started to cry then and heard myself saying, “I’m sorry tooooo!”  And our teacher blew her whistle and we filed back in for some more dreaded arithmetic. 

Jay never bothered me again.  

Neither did any other "big" kid on the playground.  His friends never said a word to me the rest of the year.  They just  gave me a lot of room.  And I learned a life lesson that day – sometimes one has to just stand and fight.  Running away doesn’t solve - it usually just prolongs.  

And I didn’t have to prove my manhood again for years.

PINBALL WIZARDS

George and Mary’s Luncheonette - what a great place, a great memory.

I still smell the smoky emporium soaked in the residue of ten thousand fried burgers.  G&M’s was the hangout of the Bacon School scholars.  Lunch time filled the soda fountain and grill with 7^th and 8^th graders, the only students not required to eat in the cafeteria.  The menu, true teen gourmet - grease burger, cheese grease burger and the infamous G&M American sub, a roll loaded with oil, vinegar, oregano and an array of cholesterol laden lunch meats and more oil.  

In the back room of G&M’s was a row of pinball machines.  Dark and foreboding, only the true devotee would venture to this lair.  The walls were black from grill smoke and the odor of sneaked Lucky’s hung in the exposed eves.  The flashing lights of the immense machines gave it an eerie throbbing glow.  This was as close to a den of iniquity as a junior high kid could get.  . 

And Brad H. was a pinball wizard who ruled in this twilight of flashing lights and the ping and clunk of the dancing stainless steel balls. (His grandmother was the "M" in the G &M, so he had played countless games without spending a hard earned nickel.)  

I, on the other hand, had invested hundreds of buffalo heads in these pirates without once adding my initials to the winners circle on the illuminated marquee of the Batman and Robin Double Trouble machine.  I am convinced that the machines knew an amateur from a pro.  Bing, bang, bong, and the lights would blink and the flippers would flip.  It was hypnotic to say the least.  Our burger and coke waited on the bar as we frittered away our lunchtime. Bing, bam, the balls flew and the scores mounted.   But never was I (or anyone else) ever able to match the 999,999,999 points of the great Wizard - Brad. 

But one night I was hitting on all cylinders.  It was a Friday and the South Millville boys were at G&M’s and not at the movies like most of our Jr. High classmates.  Pin ball had won over a Jerry Lewis comedy.

The machine was hot.  I had 56 million gazillion and now only needed one good ball, just one last good ball to overtake Brad if only for a brief moment of kid fame.  I pulled back the “striker” to its fullest.  My left index finger  poised on the flipper button.  I started to sweat.  This was the moment of truth.  A moment where I had an opportunity to become legend or be hurled back once again into pinball ignominy.

I loosed the striker.  Bing, Zing =  another 50,000 points on the big wheel and the ball spun around and was thrown toward my left flipper.  I waited for the precise moment and flipped and also struck the side of the machine, with just the right amount of force – so that my ball moved to the left, but not hard enough to “tilt” the machine.  This would mean immediate "game over" by the ever vigilant cheater watchdog built into every machine.  (Brad was a master of this slap technique and had never tilted a machine in over 10,000 games.)

My ball curved and hit the big red target.  Another 75,000 points.  I only need 100,000 more to post a big win.  I would become a G&M's  pinball wizard.  Maybe even get a free shake from my friends who were gathered around in silent respect for my attempt.   Iszard the Wizard.

The ball traveled down the inclined deck.  I rapped it with my right flipper and it flew around the machine like it had eyes - zing, zing, bong.  999, 999, 9998 points chalked up, I needed only to sink my ball in one of the bonus holes or hit the big zinger in the middle and I would make pinball history.

The ball was spit back at me at warp speed by the mechanical plunger at the top of the board.  My adrenaline spurted and I tensed.  My hair stood up on the back of my neck. This was it. But I knew I could do it.  Pinball fame was one flip away.  The silver orb shot toward my left flipper, my weak side.  I waited until the precise moment and with a dynamic twitch of my index finger pressed the flipper button.  It didn’t flip.  The flipper didn’t flip.  For god’s sake a malfunction in the machine.  The ball fell into the gutter and the game was over.

I had racked up 999,999,998. Two lousy points short of besting the Brad the best for at least until he played again.

 The machine stopped whirring and went into its “ballyhoo mode” playing the Batman and Robin theme from the TV in that tinny, mechanical, pinball machine music.  I stood there stunned for a moment and then walked away.  So near and yet so far away was that win.

I never played pinball again after that.  And Brad H. would never be beaten.  His initials remained on top of that list until George and Mary retired, the joint closed and their machines where trucked off to be sold at auction. 

But the record stands forever - and the pinball records of my day will never be challenged by the kids of today – those great gaudy blinking machines all went the way of the dinosaurs – killed off  by Xbox and iPad.

HARROWING HORMONES

My 7^th grade year was one of awkwardness, pimples and really growing fast.  I towered over the other boys in my grade and was very self-conscious of my size not realizing what a gift my very healthy body was until much later in my life.

For most of us, 7^th grade and growing up, was a series of dramas interspersed with embarrassing moments.

I will never forget our first “gym” class and a certain brainy friend, a surgeon to be. trying to put his athletic support on backwards and over his underwear to boot.  Matter of fact, most of us wore our required protective apparatus over our underwear – as Mr. Scargle, the gym teacher, was wont to come into the locker behind the Bacon stage to check as we undressed.  Taking a shower after class was totally out of the question.  We jokingly wondered if he checked the girls bras.  Sex was indeed on our minds.  

A week before school started the jock quest  began for me as I made the obligatory visit to Garton’s Sport Center with my mom (the downside of a single parent family) to get my unmentionable. We walked to the back of the store where these items where hidden out of sight - my how things have changed.  Mr. G bellowed, “How can I help you Cal?  I whispered.  “I need one of those (my voice faded)  Can’t hear you son?  My mother blurted – He needs one of those jock strap thingies for school.”  What size, he asked me?  I replied, a…a large?  My mother laugh, “Ha Ha,  No Bob, he may be tall, but he is not large.” I was absolutely mortified and tried to disappear.

Something was going on for sure inside me and this was just the beginning. 

I now know that my male hormones were beginning to escape from the deep recesses of my Id.  But then had no idea what was going on - sex education in my day was peeking at a French magazine that a friend dad brought home from the war.. And it all came to a head (excuse the expression) in my English class about a month into the term.

A very developed girl name Gail sat near me during English class where we were forced fed the first 6 million stanzas of the Evangeline.  “This is the forest primeval, the land of the oak and the hemlock.”  Over the decades, it still comes back to me from the crevices of my gray cells.  What agony to memorize and then stand to recite.  Oh, why did we do this?  Weren’t books invented so we would not have to rely on oral history?

Back to Gail.  

On a particularly boring afternoon of great literature I could not keep my eyes off the back of her fuzzy sweater.   Her pink angora perfectly outlined her bra strap and those tiny mysterious hooks,and eyes that keep her mighty mysteries at attention.  I pondered - I bet buying a supporter for guys is the same as that first bra for girls. Indeed heavy thinking.  (I leaned just how hard it was on a shopping trip with my daughter decades later)

I could not stop looking at that outline.  I had my first fantasy. I think?  I saw myself grabbing and pulling that strap back like a sling shot and letting it go -  SWACK it would go like a cherry bomb in a silo. I could feel my face starting to get hot.  

Miss Lord’s, well in her 60 (and probably never to have a bra snapped on her for any reason) –  stopped reading and looked over her glasses, and caught me staring at Gail.  I knew that Miss Lord knew exactly what was on my mind. Nevertheless, she only got a chance to utter the words, “Mister Iszard” when the bell rang and I bolted for the door.

And unknowingly she had saved me from doing something that would have probably gotten me expelled in my day and jailed today.  From that day I tried to control my imagination - but girls did replace baseball as my most prevalent daydream.  And still do!

And just think – just a few weeks before this  I didn’t even like 'em!

LOVE'S SEASON

Bacon Elementary days keep creeping into my thoughts...

Once I got over the first day I liked school and liked all my teachers but in Fifth grade I really loved my teacher.  And that year everything changed at the Bacon School; a very different kind of year in many ways.  Millville was growing  and there weren’t enough teachers to cover all the classes. Two grades were combined into one classroom at the Bacon School,  I attended 5^th and 6^th grades that fall in one very full classroom. 

I loved it.  

Our teacher was Miss Moore.  I never knew her first name - and years later I would learn that that year was her first year of teaching and last in Millville - and looking back I think she did a great job juggling the lessons in this throwback to a  one room school house environment.

I loved it because it was a chance to listen to the 6^th grade lessons when I was supposed to be doing my 5th grade deskwork.  I liked their subjects much more than the “kid-stuff” that I was supposed to be concentrating on in my own grade.

When all was going so well that year the worst thing that can happen to a kid, happened. 

Right after Thanksgiving my mom told some shocking and chilling news.  We were moving to another part of town the first day of Christmas Vacation and I was going to go to the Wood School. Oh no, a fate worse than death.  I was going to leave good ole Bacon School and my South Millville pals at Christmas no less...

I would miss our marble championship matches on the playground, our kickball games after school.  Most of all my comfortable and known place in the pecking order of elementary school life.  I was being forced (against my will) to go into that dark abyss called a new school, a new class, and make new friends.  But there was no escape.

My mind raced for days.  How about I forget my timetables?  Will I have to read more books to catch up?  Will I be embarrassed about my worst subject, arithmetic?  Will they make me talk in front of the class everyday?  Yikes!

One thing I knew - I will never have any friends for the rest of my life.

And so, on the last day before Christmas vacation I waited until everyone had gone and slowly walked up to Miss Moore's big desk.  Even now I remember how young and innocent and blond she was.  She always smelled so clean, not like the old (maid?) teachers I had endured so far - who smelled mostly of chalk dust and perfume.

I told Miss M. that I would be moving and she looked up from marking our final spelling papers of 1954, and she said, “Well it has been a pleasure having you as my student and I will miss you in the New Year.”  And that was it! That was all she would say at this worst terrible moment of life.

I was crushed.  

I stood there for a long moment - I wanted to tell her that I loved her and that I would always love her - but I just said, "Merry Christmas Miss Moore" and staggered away.  Then she called to me, I quickly turned in great anticipation.  “Cal, would you mind closing the door on your way out?”  

"Good bye" I said as I closed it slowly, 

I took one last look at my true love through that tiny window in the middle of the heavy oak door.  And saw my wonderful teacher with her eyes filled with tears as she dropped her head down on her desk and started to cry. And so did I - all the way home.

I think she loved me too!

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

R.M. Bacon School is still on my mind.  Facebook was filled this week with new photos of the 86th Anniversary celebration and a bunch of "white hairs" dancing - but the old photos, they got me thinking about those days again...

After the trauma of my reluctant first day, going and staying in kindergarten came easy.  

I soon found it was not that bad as we spent a lot of time putting together wooden puzzles, Miss Garton, (all teacher were called "miss" whether they were or not) would choose a person from each of our tables of 4 to go pick a puzzle from the rack.  I am not sure what pedagogical concept this enforced but we did and re-did these puzzles the whole year.   I always picked Little Boy Blue - it was by far the easiest and got this task over quickly.

We also did a lot of snacks.  Taking naps on rag rugs.  Drawing pictures with ancient stubs of crayons from a waxy box that was missing all of the good colors. I thought “this isn’t school, it play time with worn out toys.”   I guess I was expecting more as my mom and I played school many nights and her lessons seemed more challenging.  I wondered why we had to wait a whole year to get to the reading and the writing?

Breaking up the routine every other week was the visiting art teacher and her cart of wonders. 

She would wheel in and we would make paper chains for Christmas and papermache eggs for Easter.  Most all of art learning seemed to center around holidays for some reason.  But one day we were instructed to do a non-holiday task, to paint a picture of our house with those smelly mason jars of poster paints. 

Editors note:  After much study of this over many years watching my own kids, I conclude that every kid artist does the following - they work the paper vertically, a blue line across the top = the sky.  A green line across the bottom = the ground.  A box with a triangle on top is their house, always with smoke curling from a chimney.  Next to the house is a stick figure waving one hand = me.  Sometimes next to the stick kid is a smaller stick dog or cat.

So I got busy.  

I brushed a mixture of blue and white to tone down the brilliant blue of the alla prima approach to this work.  I turned the paper horizontally and floated my new sky tone down to form an horizon line that was a tad above the center.  I then started to dry brush out combinations of green and brown for the ground of the landscape when the "art" teacher came by.  "Calvin ! WHAT in the world are you doing???” she barked.  The whole class became silent.  She continued, "The sky isn’t supposed to come all the way down the paper...it should be a line across the top.  Too much paint here.  And why are you painting it long ways?"  To this day I remember my reply - it has stayed with me because it forged the foundation of the rest my life in the arts.

I replied, "Well I think that the land is big and it fits better long ways on the paper...and I think the sky always meets the ground?   She turned and said to Mrs. Garton, “this is the one who wouldn't come in the first day, right?  I knew he was going to be trouble.”  

And I was.

All my life of learning, painting and creating I questioned why and often had a troublesome inquiring mind as they say.  And years later I learned as a Fine Ars Education teacher that my take on the horizon and perspective as a kindergarten-er was not normal for that age.  Kids in kindergarten are supposed to see things flat.  Little did I know then  I was in a small minority whose inner eye saw the world differently.  Like the great masters - I was not understood, not appreciated in my time.

For the rest of that year, hard as it was,  I painted like everybody else in my class.  For as Picasso was fond to quote Hippocrates:  "Life is short, and art long, opportunity fleeting, experience perilous, and decision difficult."