Activities: Music

As I mentioned earlier, at Elizabeth Bradley Elementary School, they asked us what instrument we’d like to play. I had only the vaguest of notions what instruments there were: music, especially performance, hadn’t played a big role in our home life. I said saxophone, working from a crude mental image of a long, black thing with silver keys. Somebody caught on, and I was soon ingesting the rudiments of the clarinet. Wish I could claim the initiative, but I was pretty passive in this transaction.

We had a city elementary orchestra, in which I played as a sixth-grader, and of which I retain only vague memories.

It was an easy (and again a largely passive) transition to the clarinet section of the orchestra at Arrowview Junior High School. The orchestra, yea, even my section therein, became the locus of most of the few social connections I developed, during those three years.

I joined the clarinet section of the Pacific High School Band, pretty much as a logical continuation of my orchestral activities in elementary and junior high school. Orchestra, of course, would have been even more logical. May have been a scheduling problem. The excellent Mr Harry Harbaugh ran both organizations.

By all accounts, I played a passable if not a distinguished clarinet. During football season, we were the marching band; the rest of the year, we operated as a concert band, with occasional pep-band duties for basketball games and such.

Band, 1956

Band, 1957

Band, 1958

Activities

Music