The night I met Hy

I remember quite vividly the day I met both Hy and Carmen. Friday night at St. Joseph Patron Cadets' rehearsal hall ( a gym, really) I'd decided to try to join because I'd seen them the season before and didn't want to continue to place 16th in competitions that only fielded 12 corps - if you know what i mean. So I walk in and was was instantly struck by the comportment of the young folks. I went to a table on the side and asked one of the guys there who it was I had to speak to about joining. His name was Joe Luginsland and the first thing he asked me what I played so I told him French Horn and the second thing he said was "Oh, boy! Hy's gonna love you!" I didn't know anything so I just kinda grinned.
He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me over to this huge guy and introduced me. So you play French Horn, eh?
How long? I told him a couple of seasons and that I went to Music & Art High School and played Horn in "F" too. "Got a good ear?" Pretty good, I told him and added I can sing, too - I didn't know what I was saying, really. So he walks over to where they had the chairs set up in an arc, grabs a horn and hands it to me. Play the scale. I did and he cocks his head and says: "Now play it like you mean it." So I play like this languid long tone scale and he grabs the horn out of my hand and points the bell in my face and blows a scale so loud my ears flap back against my head then - now you have to understand that I'm 5' 8" 125 pounds - hands me the horn and says quietly (though I couldn't be sure because I may have been deaf) "Play it like you mean it." He wasn't being mean or anything and I could see that so I puffed up as big as I could not noticing that now there was a crowd around us like the whole horn section (all 24 of them - the best horn line I'd ever heard not on a Fleetwood recording although that would change pretty darn quick) and I blew a very fast quarter note scale louder than I'd ever played in my life - up to then, mind you. And this angelic like smile spread across his face and he said: "Well, if you can march and do that, I think we can get you in. Let's go talk to Carmen."
And that's another story.
Puppet