Story Time

Today, I want to tell you a story.  Not a particularly good or funny story, but a story.  Have a seat, feel free to eat a snack or have some tea.

Many years ago, I had the good fortune to play with a music group that toured Iowa.  I was in the jazz band part of this group, playing second chair alto saxophone and clarinet.  After spending the majority of the summer playing in tiny towns, and slightly larger towns, and sometimes big towns, all over Iowa; staying in Iowan homes with nice Iowan families (ask me about the "shower is in the basement" home-stay.  Yikes!)  I learned a lot about what is involved with schlepping around a three hour show, including set pieces, instruments, PA gear, sound equipment, about 45 high-school aged kids, plus band leaders,a charter bus, and a 50-foot Ryder truck.

The final stop for this tour was a two-week stay-and-play at the Iowa State Fair.  I was introduced to the wonderfulness of the Tubadour, saw the bands Sugar Ray, Fastball, and Def Leppard at the Grandstand, and between shows, rehearsals, and enjoying the fair stuff, practicing my clarinet because I was going to start college immediately after the Fair ended.

Just before the Fair opened, our group was supposed to act as Grand Marshals of the pre-Fair parade.  So, they loaded us up onto trams that took us from the Fairgrounds to the parade route.  The skies began to get grey and dark...

We arrived at the Capitol building, and had to wait for rain.  A lot of rain.  Fortunately, we were allowed to stay on the trams until the weather cleared enough to allow the parade to begin.  Being naive high school students, and at the end of our tour, we were in fairly good spirits, and so took the rain in stride.  Once the officials were okay with starting the parade, we were loaded up onto a flat-bed semi-truck trailer (fortunately, we didn't have to play or sing or dance on that thing) and paraded through the parade.  Fine.

After reaching the end of the parade route, we were unceremoniously kicked off of the flat-bed trailer and told to wait for the trams to pick us up to take us back to the Fairgrounds.  The trams did not show up.  It was still a bit overcast, though the rain had stopped.  So, we walked around a bit, following our fearless leaders as they seemingly wandered around Des Moines, searching for our missing trams.  At one point, one of our directors decided to leave the group, apparently determined to find the trams himself.  The other directors stuck around, to keep us in line, and not lost, I guess.  May I remind you that this was before the proliferation of cell phones? 

It's beginning to get late, and still no trams.  Our director returns to where we had been waiting for him and says, in that ominous tone that tells you that you are going to have to do something that you really aren't going to like: "This is going to be an adventure!"  He turned and began walking.  We followed him.  His solution was to have us walk the several miles back to the Fairgrounds.  This resulted in 45 kids, in khakis and polo shirts, wandering around the not-very-nice part of Des Moines. 

We were nearly to the Grounds, when the trams appear! Where the hell were they nearly an hour ago when we were still soggy from the rain, cold, tired, and hungry post-parade?  We were told that they were being used to ferry the Fair Queens back to wherever it is that Fair Queens come from, and the musicians were neglected.  (I know.  Typical, right?)  We got back on our trams, and rode the remaining half-mile back to our Fair dorms. 

And with that, we kicked off our two-week stint at the Iowa State Fair.