I watched the dandelion seed swirl around the shimmering silk of the color guard flag being tossed in the breeze. It jumped in a gust, and then rested for a moment on a shoulder in front of me. Like a frosty fleck of translucence, it sat, crested on the black and white shoulder flare of the Marlington Band uniform in front of me. The air currents shifted again, and the dandelion seed was aloft and drifting through our marching ranks, row after row after row.
In
the summer we seemed to concentrate a lot of effort and time in parade
formations and marching. Our parade year was marked with the Memorial Day
parade in the early summer, and with the Carnation Festival and Hall of Fame
parades in the hottest days of deep Ohio summer.
Experienced
band members were generally positioned at the ends of each row -- they knew
each routine; they could keep our ranks from getting to spread out, or too
bunched up. Their footwork was always
locked into the movement of the parade.
In my first year, I was positioned securely in the interior of our line
where I had guides to my and right and left to help keep me at the right pace
and in the right spacing.
He
lifted his hand during one of our early practices and flattened it and touched
his nose. He looked straight ahead, and we could see his eyes very clearly. He
moved his left hand very far out to his side and said in his outdoor teaching
voice:
"I
can still see my left hand clearly. I don't have to even move my head to see
it. This is called peripheral vision.
You have to learn to use it, and to trust it if you are going to learn
how to march correctly." Mr. Frenz picked his clipboard back up and
motioned for us to continue our practice session.
Mr. Frenz would always walk along side of us, near the front, and just to the right of our passing columns. Always in a coat and tie, in every condition of weather, he was there walking beside us, watching us, listening to us. During a moving parade, very few could see him -- but we could always feel his presence there alongside of us -- very much like his presence in our own lives. I am sure that every single member of the band had his phone number and knew that they could call him for anything.
In our row of mellophones, I could see Robin Himebaugh, Chris and Melanie Bricker, and Matt Garman. All these fellow band members had talents and abilities far exceeding my own -- but I never remember them once pointing that out to me. Everyone seemed welcoming to me, they encouraged me and consistently provided for me with positive role models to imitate. The entire band culture was like that to varying degrees. There was a culture of success there that permeated every area of the entire organization. Marlington was a musical organization of inclusion, and of exacting performance standards.
The Memorial Day Parade took us through the old neighborhoods of north Alliance, where I had lived, down North Union Avenue to the hushed solemn Alliance Cemetery where we always marched in silence with a solitary snare tap as a cadence... tap, step, step, step, tap, step, step, step – and always in unison and leading with the left foot, together. Even when we were not playing, we understood that we were performing. Even when we were not marching, we understood that we would walk as if we were, together. It was another unwritten rule that was self-correcting, and self-enforced. No stragglers: no one left behind. No one walked by themselves, but only together and in line and in rhythm with the solitary tap of a snare rim.
The
Carnation Parade ventured through the newer parts of South Alliance, down into
the gentle forested hills and winding roads of little Silver Park.
The
Hall of Fame Parade was the longest of our marching treks -- bringing us
through the seemingly never-ending urban streets of Canton, up to the cavernous
Fawcett Stadium. It seemed as if this
parade was organized to occur on always the hottest day of every summer. And this was before the concept of the summer
uniform had developed. That meant, one
marching band uniform for all seasons.
We
marched in blasting frozen wind gusts through the city streets of Chicago in
the McDonald’s Christmas Parade.
We
marched in the beautiful tropical warmth of the surreal Epcot Center and
Disney's Magical Kingdom at night.
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We marched in the Saint Petersburg Festival of States.
We
marched into stadiums filled with people under lights at night. We marched in
rainstorms, in muddy county fairs, through heat, through cold and in every
condition in between. We did it all
together.
The Cadence That Always Was
All
our parades had a heartbeat with one cadence. The cadence was a signature
marching cadence that was never written down and has no one to claim as a
composer. It is a cadence that was just 'always there.' it starts with one snare that announces
smartly -- tap, tap, tap, tip, tap tap, then rolls into a series of beautiful,
complex, and symmetrical patterns -- rolling through every part of the
percussion section -- rippling like balanced and controlled electric-infused thunder
and a wave of energy that passes through snares, base drums, quads, symbols,
and then back to snares again and again and again. It is a complex cadence, and at the same
time, it is a simple cadence with an infectious pattern that you can never forget.
[1]
Air
currents surrounding us shifted again as we came to a halt at the end of the
parade route. Another dandelion seed
blew through our straight ranks and came to rest again on that shoulder in
front of me. Was it the same seed from
hours before? Another gust of cooling wind carried the seed away into the
distance, and I used my peripheral vision to watch it disappear behind us.
We
have all become like those dandelion seeds drifting through our ranks. We are carried by lofts of wind into the
distance. Our memories of Marlington are deep inside of our hearts - very deep. And when we tell our stories, when we play
our music, we are spreading those seeds of beauty around us -- and those seeds
will hopefully disperse and grow to inspire the future and just maybe the
cadence that was never written down may be heard again.
[1] The cadence that wasn’t
written down, at least by the time that I and my fellow bandmates were wearing
the uniform, did in fact have a written origin.
Mr. Ray Koontz, when a member of the Ohio Brass Factor Drum and Bugle
Corps, heard this cadence when in competition against the West Shoremen DCA
Senior Corps. The cadence was so
infectious, Ray spent a weekend writing it out by hand and from memory. He gave it to the Marlington drum section to
play and they called the cadence ‘The Shoremen.’
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