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Maybe it’s my perverse imagination, but whenever it gets this cold I think of cemeteries.

The Source

Maybe it’s my perverse imagination, but whenever it gets this cold I think of cemeteries. You really haven’t experienced pain until you’ve played military Taps on a bugle when the weather’s below zero. You arrive at the cemetery 30 minutes early then stand at attention for a bone-numbing fifteen minutes as the minister administers the final words to the family. No matter how religious you may be, this part is always too long and you stand there wishing that King David would have cut the 23rd Psalm down to a twitter-able couple of lines. The final prayer is completely as you silently mumble one of your own, the funeral director nods to the American Legion commander, the legionnaires respond to the “Ready! Fire!” Again… “Ready! Fire!”…and then their final volley. By this time only two of the six guns haven’t jammed in the cold and you respond to the final Pop-pop by putting the trumpet to your lips. Remember the scene in The Christmas Story where Ralphie and his friends encourage Flick to put his tongue to the icy steel bar of the jungle gym? And like poor dumb Flick, you are doing this on purpose. If you’re smart you’ve kept your trumpet mouthpiece in your pocket until the last minute, desperately squeezing it as if somehow whatever is left of the warmth into your hand will somehow permeate the metal. When the final bang is still echoing around the tombstone you quickly pull out the metal shard of death, try to hold your shaking hand still enough to insert the thing into your horn then put the metal cup to your mouth. No matter how quickly you try to perform this slight-of-frozen-hand, it’s never quite quick enough. The mouthpiece turns to tundra in a cemetery second and you begin playing Taps, dreading the coming high “F.” An experienced Tap-ster will tell you that the high F is the Kilimanjaro of bugle-dom. It’s the apex, the summit, the Mt. Everest of the tune. Buglers have been known to lose sleep and resort to heavy medication at the very thought of hitting the high F in front of a mass of frozen mourners. Of course, if you’re using an actual bugle the task is even more terrifying as you have to reach one note higher for the “G,” but with a trumpet the F is plenty scary enough. (Totally uninteresting musical coda here: As you grow older and your lips flabbier, you can resort to a high E or even chicken out completely and opt for a namby-pamby D, but this requires you exposing two fingers to the artic blast. The F is higher but it’s warmer.) The bugler at President Kennedy’s funeral busted his high F and the poor guy spent the rest of his life hearing the service replayed over and over. I think he’s in a military retirement home now somewhere playing cello. John Sheppard was a mean kid. Okay, now he’s a respected insurance salesman near Springfield, but in the late sixties he was first-chair trumpet in our high school band and I played echo to his lead Taps at a slew of military funerals. On one frozen morning near Fishhook, Illinois, John and I were standing under tree, trying to keep the frozen sleet from gathering on our trumpets. The guns went off, John ran to play this horn, and as he left he grabbed the mouthpiece out of mine and stuck it into the frozen ground. There I stood…the guns roaring, 30 seconds away from my echo, and my horn’s mouthpiece was full of frozen graveyard dirt. I blew into it…nothing. I threw it against a tree. Nada. Finally I took out my brand new, gold-plated ballpoint pen that someone had given me for graduation and speared it down through the throat of the mouthpiece, unclogging the guck and ruining a nice new pen. I didn’t like John much that day. Then there was the day at the Concord cemetery when my young echo player didn’t show at all and I had to blow Taps then slip and slide my way over the hilltop to play my own echo. Greg Floyd was his name and I’m still looking for him. Some funeral homes have a robo-bugle they bring to the graveside, simply pushing a button and getting a digital rendition of Taps. What it lacks in authenticity it makes up for in warmth. I think I’ll get me one. Whatever the case, every time I gripe and groan about the aches and pains accompanying a trip to town in this dog-icing weather I can always say to myself: It could be worse. I could be in the cemetery.