[Dixielandjazz] Re: Loved your post...

[Charlie Hooks]

I just found this on my Drafts list, and don't know whether or not I have
already posted it.   If I have, forgive me.  But here it is again.

Charlie




on 2/15/03 4:52 PM, GWW174 at aol.com at GWW174 at aol.com wrote:

> Guess I was born too early... today I could sue and win

    Either that or born too late!  Born in 1929 was a wonderful year, giving
me a growing-to-puberty in the never-again-to-be-lived wonderful age of
pre-war United States!  We were all, adult and kids, still hold-overs from
the 19th century back then.  We got heatstroke and never sued the Sun.  We
thought that if we got tired or hungry, it was our own fault--and that if we
weren't tired or hungry either one, why, we were OK!  Simple folk, we were.

    We got bored, but we found our own amusement--games in summer, like
baseball without adults even thinking of showing up!  Hell, this was the end
of the Great Depression: adults had work to do--if they were lucky!  I was a
star hitter on the school team, and my Dad never even THOUGHT of coming to a
game to watch: the games were in the afternoon, and my Dad had bills to pay,
a payroll to meet!  He was my father, but he never hovered over me!  If I
got into a fight (as kids do) he wanted to know who won--but the idea of
filing suit against the other kid, or his father, never crossed ANYONE's
mind.  My father and his father would have either bought a beer or enjoyed a
beer, depending on who won.  An age long gone.  A way of life Gone With the
Wind.   But it was good, Gordon.  Very good, indeed.  We even found music.

    A bandmaster named Charlie Tunstall came to town in 1938 (I was nine)
and started a band.  "The Music Man"?   Exactly: but Charlie Tunstall was
REAL!.  The school system had no money to pay him, a survivor from the
United States Army Bandmasters, trumpet player exstraordinaire, silver
haired veteran of WWI who came to our tiny town (Italy, Texas) on the verge
of starvation with a young and beautiful wife (musicians are like that!) and
two young children.  Charlie charged some minimal fees for lessons, and he
fed his family that way: food was affordable.

    The Superintendant was a tuba player, still had his horn, gave us a room
at the grade school, and used to sit in often at the rehearsals on Tuesday
night, 7 to 9, in the overwhelming Texas heat without air conditioning.
Water ran in rivulets from every face, but we were used to that.  We were
Texans, and this was OLD Texas.  Before the fancy stuff got there.  In
summer you sweated; in winter you (occasionally) froze.  But you played your
horn, did your job, whatever was necessary.  Hey, you think a band rehearsal
could got hot?? Try the front end of a dry cleaning plant, over steam
presses for several hours....It's a hundred and four outside?  Well, it's a
hundred and fifty four INside over the presses...temp of a medium suana...

    The superintendant's name comes to me: "Mr. Willis."  Sir: if someday in
Heaven you are asked to account for your days, please remember the day you
afforded Charles L. Tunstall a place in your school system and me a place in
his musical world--and all the rest of us from that long ago day: I will try
at some other time to recount all our names.  Just now I wish to recall the
deed itself:  You did what the Muse of Music demanded of you:  Charles L.
Tunstall taught me music.

 









    [The Superintendan't name just came to me: Mr. Willis.  That's all I
know, but in the spirit world if anybody raises questions--tell 'em I thank
you from the bottom of my life, Mr. Willis.]

    My father had a Dry Cleaning plant in that small town, and somebody owed
him two dollars!  That was EIGHT suits of clothes cleaned and pressed, for
we charged top-of-the-line Depression prices: 25 cents per suit.  [My
computer keyboard does not have on it a "cents" symbol!  Umm-humm!]   That
25 cents was equal to $7.50 at present prices in Chicago.  That's what a
suit costs now, cleaned and pressed, for precisely the same cost: cleaning
fluid and labor.  Your "money" sucks, right  OK.

    Well, the guy (luckily, as it turned out) didn't have the two bucks, but
he did have, as he explained to my Dad, "an old clarinet that your kid might
like to play."  So, for two bucks, my Dad bought me a clarinet.  1938.  In
depths of the Great Depression.  Dad said OK.  He deserves a lot of credit,
too!  Two bucks, back then, would buy a week's supply of groceries! And
while we never went hungry,  we came real close, many times I think.  My Dad
was a hero.  A real one...  He lost 4 Dry Cleaning plants: but he started up
FIVE! 

    And the last one was in early 1942 on the road out to Blackland Army
Airfield.  You can guess what happened.  No, you really can't....

    I'm thirteen, in Junior High School, and just recently moved to Waco,
Texas, from the tiny town of Italy, Texas.  Waco was the Big City: it had
over 80,000 people in 1942!  But it had something for me vastly more
important: it had within 30 miles south TWO army camps (later Forts): it had
South Camp Hood, and North Camp Hood.  AND it had just outside its city
limits on the west Blackland Army Air Base  and Waco Army Airfield on the
east.  We are talking here about many many thousands of troops--all the
go-to-hell caps on the smart-assed 2nd Lieutenants cruising Austin Avenue,
our main street.  We had here an Invasion!  North simply invading South! All
these guys were from Northern States, and I was fascinated by them, their
various Northern accents, and soon learned to distinguish them--I soon could
tell a southern Pennsylvanian from an northern Pennsylvanian! I loved it!





 

 

Thanks much for your encouragement.
Charlie