Life and MCM

Recently, a short clip of a performance I was in was found on YouTube. This got me to thinking…

Everything I needed to know I learned in…(not Kindergarten but…) the Morris County Militia.

There is a famous poem written by some equally famous guy, whose name I can’t remember, which says that all the important facts of life he needed to be a success were learned in Kindergarten. Well that’s great I suppose, and it probably is a good illustration of how the behaviors of most adults can be boiled down to examples of childish five year olds. Kindergarten however is a very short nine months of one year. I would argue that the nine years I spend in a competition level Fife and Drum Corps contributed much more than my first year of public school. “Of course,” you say – but, hey, I had to start this somewhere.

Rule #1: Success will mean that you will have to leave friends behind.

(Caution lots of personal history in this section)

In February of 1972, I walked home from school to a friend’s house. While we were having the requisite milk and cookies in the kitchen, I noticed an odd musical instrument on the counter. How did I know it was a musical instrument? Well, it looked a lot like toy “flutes” I had seen except there was no end hole to blow in. I asked my friend what it was…she said, “That’s a fife.” Oh? Can you play it? She did. Not really great, but we’re talking second grade here. She told me about a group of kids who met in a local church hall and learned to play this thing. Did I want to come? Sure! An activity! Uh, oh…was it expensive? No, she said. Dues are a quarter a week and they give you the fife.

I have to be honest and say that I don’t remember how I convinced my mom to drive me to this meeting. I don’t remember her calling the friend’s mom to ask about safety, or cost, or anything at all. I just remember her driving me to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, dropping me off and saying she’d be back to pick me up later. I think I probably found my friend and followed her into the church hall. Wow – look, lots of kids I go to school with are here! How come I never heard of this? I obviously must live in the wrong neighborhood. I do remember that I was nervous the whole night about only being 8. Somewhere along the line someone said that you had to be 9 to join. I wasn’t going to be nine for another 2 months. Would they let me in???

The fifers were almost exclusively girls. Drummers were usually boys. This is just the way it was. It’s 1972, and gender roles in suburban New Jersey are still pretty conservative. No problem for me, I was way too small to play a drum anyway. No way could I carry the thing even if I wanted to. The fifers were set up in the hall with about 5 tables. There were 6 to 8 girls at each table and one instructor for each table. I remember two old (keep in mind that I’m 8 here) men and a few older teens who were the instructors. The tables served to group fifers in to learning groups. If you were at the back of the room you were in the lowest group. You probably didn’t know how to play and couldn’t read music. I was issued my first fife…engraved with “A51” on the end. What was that supposed to mean? I found out later that a bunch of black Bakelite plastic fifes all look the same if they’re left on chairs or tables and having that identifying mark was very important. What did the A mean? Maybe fifes are an A instrument. I’m not sure and it never really mattered. I just had to remember that I was number A51.

I really nice teenage girl was the teacher at my first table. She showed me how to hold the fife and told me not to worry about the fingers yet. Blow across the hole like you would a coke bottle, she said. Ok, I can do that. Do it all the time when the babysitter lets us have cokes on Friday nights when my parents are out. I spent the first night doing that – just trying to make a sound. At the end of the night, for about ½ an hour, they had us line up. Fifes in rows of four – gosh there were a lot of rows, maybe 8? I was put in the very back. The instructor told me just copy what everyone else does and don’t try to play. Just hold up the fife like everyone else. Wish she would have told me you start with your left leg. They ran through 6 songs and then sat down to hear announcements. The 25 cents was collected. Was I in? Wait a minute, I’m only 8. Nobody said anything. I didn’t volunteer information. My friend said to come back next Wednesday. Practice is every Wednesday at 7. My mom just started bringing me. I guess I was in….

I don’t know why, but I was really eager to learn how to do this. I would pick up the fife and play around with whatever I could do at the moment and found that over the next few months, I moved from table to table and was eventually placed ahead of my friend at Mr. Chiodo’s table. Head table. First and Second ranks. I don’t remember how long this took, but I do remember that I felt that she resented this in some way. We were never the same type of friends again. She later dropped out of MCM and eventually moved away from town. There were playground conflicts at school after I passed over her table to a higher one. MCM had become my place of success. I was able to get through the teasing, and childhood harassments of grade school because I was doing well at Fife and Drum Corps. There, doing your job (however it was defined) was rewarded. Even if you didn’t socialize with your corps members outside practice or performance…they had to respect your ability – as it was. If you did well enough to end up in the front rank…well, that was determined by how hard you practiced, and if you could “cut the mustard.” This was probably because if my next point, that the adults in charge made sure that no one suffered too terribly.

Thanks here to Mr. Hamm, who taught me the beginnings of how to read music. Reading music is like a foreign language. It takes time to learn, but can be very important down the road. Mr. Hamm’s table was the 3rd or so table on the way up the ladder. Honestly, he was kind of an odd guy but he did a great service by donating time to teach kids how to read music. I learned a skill for free that many have to pay for private music lessons to learn. And when I say free, you have look at that one little quarter we paid each week as a token of belonging. It surely didn’t pay for much.

Rule #2: Hierarchies are real world.

Once you’ve put in the effort to join a Fife and Drum Corps, and you’ve invested enough time to actually learn to play a little, you start to figure out that there’s a definite hierarchy. Really, this is very important, because real life will be like this. If you’re new, you’re not going to step in and be in the front rank. If you can’t play, you won’t be able to hide it for long. If you’re out of step, you’re going to get noticed for all the wrong reasons.

Morris County Militia didn’t have drum sergeants or fife sergeants who were assigned that position. There was a basic sort of seniority thing going on where the older kids helped the younger ones. The better players helped the lesser ones. Only the drum major and the color guard captain were identifiable. Those two positions were highly responsible and appointed by the director (as far as I could tell). There wasn’t any type of try-out. I also don’t have much knowledge of color guard, since I didn’t “hang” with them. They had different jobs and different things to learn. I sometimes wonder if people ever expressed a desire to be the drum major? How would that conversation go? "Hey, Mr. Flynn, I’d really like to be the drum major." I can’t imagine that. It’s just one of those things that happened. In the larger context of things, it didn’t matter, because I liked playing. I never wanted to be the drum major.

Within these sorts of performance based activities, there were the little hierarchies of seniority which really worked very well when there weren’t enough instructors to go around. What was really cool, was that the older kids looked out for the younger ones. Even if they wouldn’t have wanted to socialize with them outside of MCM, while they were with the group, everyone was treated like family. You might think your little brother is a complete screw up, and you wish he would go away…you might even razz on him quite a bit, but you wouldn’t let anything happen to him while you were on a trip. Between the older kids and the parent volunteers there was a definite atmosphere of guidance from afar. Most little things were decided among the kids without much adult involvement. I think though, that the major adult figures in the corps were very much aware of what was going on and making very astute decisions on when to step in. In this way kids felt that they were solving they’re own problems, with a safety net nearby. If you just couldn’t fit in, then you probably didn’t belong there. If you cared enough and wanted to be part of the group, you’d make changes in behavior to be accepted.

Rule #3: Don’t be late – EVER

This is really more about embarrassing yourself. So there should also be a sub title here that says, “Don’t forget anything – EVER.” When you’re part of a larger group – and we are all part of larger groups in the real world whether we like it or not – you can’t let your situation drag the group down. You also can’t think that you are more important than the group as a whole.

In the world of MCM there was nothing worse than being late. If the bus leaves at 4am, you better be on it. The funny thing is that I remember tracking down late people quite often. In fact, I remember being hustled out of my own house for a muster in Connecticut at about 4am by Mrs. Flynn. I also remember the intense embarrassment of boarding a completely full bus… not a seat left, and knowing I was the reason the bus was not moving. That sort of thing usually only happened once for someone.

When it came to keeping track of stuff, no one did this for us. Everyone down to the youngest person was in charge of their own stuff. If you screwed up, and didn’t have part of your uniform, then you’d have to endure the yelling, and general wrath which would ensue. I’m glad my parents didn’t make any effort to keep my stuff in order. I learned really quickly that if you didn’t have your stuff in order, you wouldn’t last long in this outfit. That is to say that I don’t think anyone was ever “thrown out,” they just decided they couldn’t take it anymore.

What difference does this make? It is part of learning that a certain part of your life will be lived as part of the collective. Sure, we all want to be individuals. Sure, “stick it to the man” is a great catch phrase. In reality, the “man” is necessary. A little chaos is fun, too much is destructive.

Rule #4: Nobody cares how hot, cold, or tired you are.

It’s hard to get excited about getting up at say 6am on a Saturday, knowing that by 10am it will be like 95 degrees in the shade, and that you will be wearing 4 layers of polyester clothing and a wig performing for a bunch of elderly tourists in South Jersey. That doesn’t matter when you have a larger idea of your responsibility to a group. When you’re a teenager, you’d probably much rather sleep in on a Saturday. However, when you belong to MCM you don’t have that luxury.

There are always trade offs. By belonging to a well polished and in demand Fife and Drum Corps, the miles of hot (or cold) parades, the frantic rush to get to the parade line followed by hours of boredom waiting for it to begin, and the countless days on a cramped bus were rewarded by the very intense but few moments of intense pride for a job well done. In order to arrive at that successful point in time an awful lot of less than exciting things had to occur.

For all four years of high school, I dedicated every Friday night to MCM practice. If I went out, would be after 9:30. Until I had my driver’s license, I don’t thing anything much beyond a slumber party was possible. Did I miss something? I might have, but I gained so much more. All those practices (and the almost nightly ones in the summer as well) added up to producing a superior product which opened up other possibilities. By the time I graduated high school, I could read music, I could play memorized music and perform a memorized marching drill at the same time, and I traveled more than most because I was good at it.

In the real world, there are weeks, and months, and years of endless chores. There are babies who won’t sleep, teenagers who won’t get up, and bosses who won’t listen. There are endless loads of laundry, and franks and beans every Friday. Why bother? You’re working for that day when your daughter plays “Sleigh Ride” in the top ranked symphonic orchestra, and it makes you cry.

Rule #5: It won’t last

This was the hardest lesson of all. In 1981, I graduated high school in June. I already knew where I was going to college, and it wasn’t going to be close enough to make MCM practices or jobs anymore. I was going to have to let it go. I didn’t realize how completely. In August, when we were informed that we were going to do our very last official job as MCM, I was shocked. There were probably rumors going around about it, but I had no idea. I was naïve that way. When I listen to the final show on the CD that was made from someone’s hand held tape recorder, I remember that I was barely able to play. I had tears in my eyes the whole time.

This served to cut a tie. Thanks to the other lessons, I packed up and moved away to school. I had been away from home. I had done my own laundry. I wasn’t scared to ride the subway. I got to class on time. I filled out all my paperwork and submitted things on time. I kept track of my stuff. I graduated.

I tackled other things with the same commitment I had for MCM. I received a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do in 2003. I also knew when it was time to move on. I enrolled in a Masters program for History in 2004. I’ll get my degree in 2009. Does that seem like a long time for an MA? Sure, but in the mean time, I’m keeping track of my stuff and doing all those things that no one notices until they aren’t done.

Seeing the clip made me think I might pick up the fife again. We’ll see, maybe I can try to teach Jenny or Alex.