When I was
in fifth grade, my father suggested that we visit the Nesbitt Farm in Benton
County, Indiana, to consider buying a purebred Polled Hereford. (The word polled means that the cattle are born
without horns.) The idea was for me to show the cow at the county fair and to
start a line of pedigreed Herefords to help pay for my eventual college
education.
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| Vicky, a Polled Hereford from Nesbitt Farm |
I remember
Mr. Nesbitt as having a pleasant smile and standing tall. If you wanted to
produce a child’s coloring book featuring life on the farm, your farmer would
look like Mr. Nesbitt. He guided us to a pasture where we could see the
heifers. Immediately, one caught my eye. She had a happy expression, almost as
if she shared Mr. Nesbitt’s jovial smile. I asked my father if we could buy
her, and Dad consented. Mr. Nesbitt invited us into his kitchen to sign the
paperwork.
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|
Me
with My Nesbitt Farm Clarinet
Pine
Village High School Marching Band
Pine
Village, Indiana, 1971
|
On a table
was a clarinet in a tan case. I stared at it as if mesmerized. For some time, I
had wanted to learn to play the clarinet.
“Say,” Mr.
Nesbitt said, reading my mind, “you wouldn’t know of anybody in the market for
a clarinet, would you? My daughter wants to sell hers.”
I thought
it was too much to be gaining a lovely heifer, already a pet in my mind, and a
clarinet—all in the same day. So I said nothing. Dad understood how much I
wanted a clarinet, and one look at my not-daring-to-hope face told him all he
needed to know.
“I guess we
could consider the clarinet, too,” said my father. “How much do you want for
it?”
“Fifty
dollars,” replied Mr. Nesbitt.
All the way
home, I carried the clarinet in my lap. My heart was racing. I could hardly
believe my good fortune. I needed no further proof that I had the greatest dad
in the world!
Learning to
play the instrument, though, was a struggle. My parents took me to lessons at a
music store in Lafayette. For the first several weeks, my teacher, a young man
named Mr. Baker, kept trying to help me make a note on it. All that happened
was that my breath escaped around the mouthpiece until I had puffed so much
that I could puff no more. One glorious afternoon, the clarinet emitted an
enormous squawk! What a thrill! Mr. Baker breathed a sigh of relief while I
smiled from ear to ear.
 |
| Me in the Indiana University Marching Hundred in 1975 |
From that
day forward, my abilities rapidly progressed. That summer, I learned that Mr.
Davis, the band director in my hometown of Pine Village, was adding younger
musicians to the high school band so as to make it as large as possible for the
band competition at the State Fair. He accepted me into the ranks. All summer,
the augmented band rehearsed on the school playground. The competition
consisted of parade shows, not football field shows. From the moment when the
front rank of the band crossed the starting line until the back rank stepped
over the finish line, a stop watch counted the seconds. Going overtime would
cost precious points. Mr. Davis had built an observation platform accessible by
a ladder. From the platform, he looked down on the band to see if the lines
were straight. Over the weeks of practice, the band pounded the grass into
powder. The white stripes that were formed with lime disappeared into the dust.
 |
|
Ray
Cramer
Director
of the Indiana University Marching Hundred
Photograph
by Larry Crewell
Bloomington
Daily Herald–Telephone, 1975
|
My memories
of the trip to Indianapolis include gagging on the girls’ hairspray on the bus,
making sure that the decorative cords around the shoulder of my uniform were in
the right place, and waiting in a line of bands that stretched as far as the
eye could see. In those years, over a hundred bands of smaller schools competed
on the day that the Pine Village band took part. Our organization came out
somewhere in the top third. I can still recall part of the melodies and part of
the steps.
 |
|
Me
on the Undergraduate Staff
Of
the Indiana University Marching Hundred
Rehearsing
New Members During Band Camp
In
the Old Stadium on the IU Campus, 1975
|
I named my
Hereford Vicky. She lived for the rest of her long life on our farm and
produced many calves, all of them as sweet-tempered as she was. They helped me
meet the cost of tuition at Indiana University, where I became a fixture. I
earned my bachelor’s degree, my master’s, and my doctorate at IU. For the first
four years, I performed on the clarinet with the famed Marching Hundred, with
the pep band during the marvelous basketball seasons when Bobby Knight was the head
coach, and with the summer concert band with music performed beside the iconic
Showalter Fountain. I shared the title of Outstanding Bandsman with Fred Kelly,
the drum major. For the next five years (while I completed my MA and my PhD), I
served on the graduate staff of the Marching Hundred and continued to play
clarinet in the pep band.
So the trip
to Nesbitt Farm truly shaped my future.
