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Veterans Day

The Source

I’ll admit it, Veteran’s Day scares me. It brings back memories of my Jr. High days, walking dutifully behind a row of gun-toting American Legion veterans to the Perry Cemetery where they would conduct a short service, shoot off the guns, then expect me to toot taps. Taps tooting is tough. The pressure is on. All eyes are on you. What else is there to look at on a cold November day in the middle of a barren cemetery? I’ve written in earlier columns about some nightmarish ceremonies of yore when my fellow trumpeter once stuck my horn’s mouthpiece into the frozen ground just before we were blow the final call. (He wasn’t a bad guy, but he was bigger and had a warped sense of humor.) …the day in the Concord cemetery when a hog fight broke out just twenty feet away from where I was trying to put a bit of benedictory solemnity to the service….the day the rifleman on the end was too short and nearly took the head off the day’s commander (yes, there are actually wads coming out of the barrels)….the nippy morning when the flag bearer ahead of me took a tumble and I had to jump over Old Glory and the embarrassed bearer….the time the kid playing echo didn’t show up and I had to play Taps then run over the hillside to play my own echo….the afternoon a soprano’s Lord’s Prayer was followed quickly by a CD playing “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Can you blame me for panicking when our local commander pulls his pickup into my driveway to ask me to play Taps? Ghosts of memorials past begin to loom large. That and the angst of a flabby lip. You can leave the piano for entire years then come back to it with reasonable success. A drummer can ignore his musical pastime for long stretches yet he’ll still be able to pick up the sticks. But if you play a brass instrument, it’s tougher….in fact, it’s nearly impossible. Not that you need the anatomical details, but a trumpet player develops a small callous inside his upper and lower lips when he plays the horn long enough. It’s a sort of buffer…a solid place onto which the musicians places his mouthpiece…a cup holder if you will. If you go long stretches without playing the trumpet this handy little callous dissolves back into the flabby stuff you were born with. In other words, your “bite” is gone. Your lip is flat. You are left to play the trumpet like you would stack jello. There’s nothing to hold onto. The good news is that no one actually cares. I’ve played Taps splendidly and the commander’s told me, “Nice job.” I’ve slaughtered the thing and he’s said, “Nice job.” The saving grace is that no one comes to a Veterans Day service to hear the trumpet player, and that’s fine with me. Which brings me to Clyde. Clyde was a World War II veteran who always marched directly in front of me to the cemetery at Memorial Day, military funerals, and for any event like Vet’s Day, which commemorates those who’ve given their lives in the service of their country. Clyde wouldn’t miss it. Okay, he missed one Memorial Day because he forgot it was Memorial Day, but after you reach 80 such things are easily forgiven. Now and then we get to know someone truly great. ..not famous, not well-known, just great. That was Clyde. I’d never heard him speak of his days in the service but one day as we gathered in front of the Arenzville Legion Hall to await the “Forward …march!” I asked him about his days in uniform. “Well,” he said, “It wasn’t much.” “Like what?” I asked. “Well, there was one time they shot the plane out from under us.” “What!?” And Clyde shyly went on to recount his career as a tail gunner, how he’d seen his buddies die beside him, and of several frightening times he’d nearly lost his life. “It wasn’t much.” Clyde was wonderful. Clyde was amazing in his quiet strength. He came home to the family farm in Arenzville then proceeded to raise children who made him proud… an accomplished musician, a PhD… but Clyde was not unique. Every town, large or small, has not only a Clyde but many Clyde’s…men and women who simply did remarkable, sacrificial things, because it was asked of them. It was the thing to do. That’s why I always try to say yes when the local commander knocks on my front door, asking if I’d put my lip through one more torturous afternoon and risk embarrassment. And afterwards when he says “Nice job,” I’m more honest than Clyde when I respond, “It wasn’t much.”