E: England (WR)

England

I’m not what one would consider a world traveler. In fact, the first time I ever flew in an airplane I was almost 30 years old. For me, my first flight was a 6 hour one across the Atlantic from New York to England.

I was a teacher in the Shoreham-Wading River School District on Long Island. The middle school band had been invited to visit a band in England. I was one of the chaperones for that trip. The trip would take place over the summer in 1980 when school was not in session. Because of the timing, not everyone in the band could attend. In fact, they were desperately short of saxophone players. To make up for their deficiency, they imported some high school players, the assistant band director and me to fill in those spots. You should know that up until that point I had never played the saxophone. I did have enough time before we went to at least learn enough to play the pieces that we would be performing there. I haven’t played the saxophone since.

We would be in England for a week. The first part of the week we would stay with families in Mansfield which is in the county of Nottinghamshire (Yay Robin Hood!) and the remaining time would be spent in London. London, for its historical value, was interesting, but my favorite times were with the people and the things we saw in Nottinghamshire.

The band we stayed with was the Coronets Marching Kazoo Band. If you’ve never seen or heard a marching kazoo band, it’s pretty impressive.

I was so inspired by the band that I bought my own marching kazoo. But then again I do tend to play an odd assortment of instruments.

The people there were exceedingly friendly. They had learned ahead of time some of my idiosyncrasies. With my habit of picking up people’s accents and way of talking, they constantly asked me to repeat some English phrases in their dialect. They also kept giving me weird objects, like stove hoses, and asked me if I could make music out of them. They shared a lot of their culture with all of us. I even got to wear one of their marching hats:

I’m glad I chose to be part of that trip. It was one of the most calming and peaceful experiences in my life.  At least the first half was. I kept in touch with some of the people there for a few years and I still continue to play with voices and weird instruments.

I have flown more times since then (feel free to read my Blog entry about my 14 hour experience from Long Island to Jonesborough, Tennessee http://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=50) but never back to Europe. Who knows, with a brother living in France I might have to venture again into the skies across the Atlantic. Time will tell.