Halftime Heroes
(Page 2 of 4)
But some things never change—like white shoes. When I was in high school, white bucks were almost a stigma. Band kids were, to use a term we didn’t have then, “dorky.” Now partly because of their success, the kids seem less square. But they are still aware of certain prejudices against them, and the sense of being left out draws them closer to their compatriots. If you wonder why a kid would take the risk of being in the band, all you have to do to answer your question is visit the band hall during a rehearsal. The band hall is the totemic meeting hall of the clan that makes music. Amid all the free-for-all atmosphere—more than a hundred kids playing, the drum majors watching a videotape of a marching contest, new kids trying on uniforms—there is disciplined concentration.
It is the day before Richardson’s first game, against the big high school in Duncanville, a growing community on the south side of Dallas. After three weeks of practice, the band finally gets to play and march at the same time; both playing and marching collapse. The sophomores start to panic, and old hands like the first trumpets break discipline to shout reminders to them. It doesn’t help. Scott Taylor remarks, “Anytime you add something new to the mix, the band retards.” He tells the right half of the formation to fall out and play the music on the sidelines while the left half just marches and counts and hums.
The evening sky is threatening the first real rainstorm in nearly two months, and the assistant band directors are trying to calm the kids down, though they aren’t feeling very secure themselves. To the east and south, dark billowy clouds are piling up, shot through with flashes of lightning, but the sky over the parking lot is clear. The hole in the clouds seems a miraculous intervention to keep the rehearsal rolling. Taylor bucks up the kids when they try again. “That’s not great, but it’s better—the difference must be coming from what’s going on under those hats.”
As the sun gets lower, a triple rainbow forms in the eastern sky. Taylor tells the kids that God’s apparent optimism for this whole project is going to be justified. “Were always having to tell you what’s wrong with what you’re doing rather than what’s right,” he says. “I hope that not for one minute do you think that we’re not proud of what you’re doing. Tomorrow’s the day. Make it a good one.”
The kids whoop and clap and beat the drums, and after some announcements, the head drum major, Martha Wilcoxson, shouts, “Di-is…missed!” and is answered, “Gol-den Ea-gle Band!” They don’t break until she cries, “Fa-all out!”
They are back on the lot at seven sharp the next morning. It is going to be a big day. This morning’s rehearsal will be the first time the band marches on the football field—Taylor and the assistant directors have been grumbling among themselves about waiting so long—and it will be hard going because for the first time the kids won’t have the help of the red and white lines that crisscross the parking lot where they’ve been practicing. After this practice, there will be another sit-down rehearsal in the band hall, the first pep rally, a final rehearsal, and the game itself.
The band directors climb up to the roof of the press box on the west side of the field to watch. The morning is the first crisp one of the season—you could almost convince yourself that it is fall and really time for bands and football games. There is nothing much to do at this point but let the band go through the routine a few times and try to correct the placement as much as possible. Two of the three drum majors act as sheep dogs to try to keep the arcs in line while Martha Wilcoxson directs.
After a frenzied pep rally at the school, the band has the last rehearsal at 5:15 p.m. out on the parking lot. Again it is back to fundamentals. Taylor shouts advice. “Look at the bodies next to you, don’t look at the ground.” To Wilcoxson: “Don’t let those hands sag, Martha. Keep ’em up.” And again: “Tubas, watch that waddling onto the field. It looks like Penguin City.”
They go through the show three or four times and finally look more secure. “That’s about a thousand times better than it’s been, folks,” Taylor says as he gives the band permission to go into the band hall to get ready for its first performance.
When every uniform has been snapped and zipped in place and every white shoe polished, the drum majors head up the marching line to take the band from the lot outside the band hall to the stadium. Martha has on a purple wool prairie skirt and blouse, and all three drum majors wear great gold satin capes that look like cardinal’s copes.
They are followed four abreast by the flag bearers (who look like Annie Oakley cloned sixteen times), then the tubas, the rest of the brass, the percussion, and the woodwinds—piccolos last. At the rear are the extras who have just joined up. A new drummer is wearing two right white shoes somebody dug up for him, and because he has not yet been assigned an instrument, he carries, poker-faced, Taylor’s bull-horn. The percussion plays the marching beat, a hot-sauce bossa nova that attracts a crowd. Though it is more than half an hour before game time, the band marches proudly into the stadium.
The band sits high in the bleachers at the forty-yard line, its straight vertical rows behind the mass of gold and purple pom-poms of the drill team. Band alums from A&M and Tech come by to visit, and ninth-graders who can’t wait to be in the band pester the kids in the front rows. The crowd pays more attention to the Richardson school song than to the national anthem, and after opening ceremonies the band members are allowed to take off their jackets, revealing matching gold T-shirts underneath.
With 9:52 to go in the second quarter, the flag bearers take their banners down to the field; they are disappointed that the new silks ordered for this season were not finished in time for the game. The percussion players slip on their bulky harnesses. At last the shakos that most of the marchers wear go on, and the band moves down to the field in marching order.
After the visiting Duncanville High School band has finished its act—a showy one of an older fashion, with more than 350 kids in the field—the Richardson band gets its chance. “Ladies and gentlemen, the pride of Texas, the Golden Eagle Band. Find your favorite band member and watch his progress throughout the season as we take our show and refine it to a competitive edge.”
The marchers stride on to the field to take their places for the first set, a double diagonal line with two wide arcs sweeping away from it. The drum majors come downfield to do their own synchronized salute, and Martha climbs onto a portable podium decorated with a student painted eagle . Hoping to be heard, she shouts, “Mark time, mark. Ready and …” as she claps her white-gloved hands.
From the first heavy “oom-pah, oom-pah-pah-pah” with which the tubas establish the rhythm of “Malagueña,” nothing seems to go quite right. Without those red lines and the verbal orders from the drum majors—who tonight just beat time—the circles jerk out of shape and collisions seem imminent at every moment. The mellow tone the band is famous for has disappeared. The music sounds more like it is being played back over a cheap transistor radio, and when the trumpeters congratulate each other with an exuberant high five after the duet you wonder what they are celebrating. The flag routine is so out of sync that you don’t realize it is supposed to be together.
This evening the announcer’s suggestion to keep watching the Golden Eagles is well advised. Everybody knows there is work to do. Nobody knows better than Scott Taylor, who has seen it all before.
It is back to work on Monday, even though it is Labor Day. Not only does the band have another home game at the end of the week but it also has to perform at a TCU game in Fort Worth on Saturday night. Sloppy execution of a fancy show will not do.
By Friday the band is up for performance. The competition, from Carter High School of Dallas, is a small band but a surprisingly ebullient one. And finally the stadium loudspeakers are echoing once again, “Ladies and gentlemen, the pride of Texas…” If the Golden Eagles are going to regain their pride, this had better be good.
As Martha gives the signal, the lower instruments begin the somber, pounding rhythm of “Malagueña.” The brass players stop ceremoniously, as if they were in a royal procession, up to the heads of their lines and turn sharply, one to the left, the next to the right. The flags, in unison, semaphore a jerky, wide-ranging salute.
