I entered high school in September 1943 when I was 13 years old.  The high school band was a big part of my high school life.  Although we did not know it at the time, our band director was highly successful in teaching us.  His name was James E. King.  We called him Prof. King.  At one time he had played cornet with Barnum and Bailey and also with Sousa.  Prof. King founded the Texas Band Directors association which is now the Texas Music Educators Association.  He also wrote our school song the “Alma Mater.”  Even to this day I remember the words, “My alma mater I sing to you.  Ideals that you gave me helped me to find, things both good and true.  So, I salute you, Alma Mater mine.”

Prof. King gave four free lessons to anyone with an instrument.  After that lessons were 25 cents.  You could also buy instruments through him.  The school owned instruments so that those who could not afford instruments could still be in the band.  Among the school owned instruments were timpani, bass drum, glockenspiel, tubas, French horns, E Flat alto horns, a valve trombone (Maudine played that her sophomore, junior and senior years),  bassoon, bass clarinet, and baritone sax.

One of the first things Prof. King would do was to confiscate lyres.  When we played in the marching band we had to memorize every piece we played.  This was about 20 different songs or marches each year.

The school owned band hats that had large white plumes and a criss cross white web belt across the chest with a gold breast plate.  Those were worn for more show.  The everyday band uniform had a flat hat and a black Sam Browne belt.  Members bought their own uniforms, usually used from someone who had dropped out or graduated, and the flat hat and Sam Browne belt.

My parents bought me a trumpet from Sears Roebuck when I was six.  Prof. King taught all ages.  There was a junior band made up of grammar school kids and a senior band of high school kids.  Some of us in the junior band, also played in the senior band when we were in 7th or 8th grade.  Actually there were two senior musical groups.  The marching band had 66 members and the concert band were those 66 and about 30 others.

I mentioned how great Prof. King was.  Every single contest we entered when I was in high school we won first place.  That included the Battle of Flowers contests in San Antonio, Texas each spring.  That competition included a marching element and a concert element.  That latter included sight reading which is playing music you have not seen before.  It also included a piece we had practiced.  When I was a senior we played a piece called The Diane Overture in which I had a French Horn solo.  When I was a senior I played E flat alto horn in the marching band and French horn in the concert band.

We traveled to these contest by bus usually from Continental Trailways and usually with the same driver whose name was Eddy.  The money was raised by projects the band undertook.  Sometimes we stayed in hotels six or seven kids to a room.  Once we stayed in barracks at Fort Sam Houston.

Prof. King would also have us play different instruments to enlarge our knowledge.  We graduated from high school in May 1947.  Prof. King died that summer.

In Texas high school football is paramount.  The band played at every football game and presented a show at half-time at every game.  Of course all of this required a lot of practicing which we did on the street next to the high school.  All practicing was done after school.

Coleman has an annual rodeo that begins with a parade and then competitions every night including bareback bronc riding, bull riding, calf roping and barrel racing on horseback for women.  The band marched in the parade and played during the rodeo performances.  There were also parades every November 11th  and July 4th.

Five band members had an unusual experience while we were seniors.  The band director at Santa Anna High School, located seven miles from Coleman, died shortly after school started.  Prof. King was asked to lead that band also until Santa Anna could hire another director.  Prof. King selected five of us who would go with him to Santa Anna at the end of our school day to help him teach in Santa Anna.

The entire marching band had another unique experience when we were seniors.  The town of Menard, about 30 or 40 miles from Coleman, had a County Fair and asked our band to march and play.  They fed us.  They had whole goats and cows cooked over big pits in the ground.  That was the first time I ate goat.

It was not unusual for Prof. King to give us music for one instrument and have us transpose into the proper key in our head to play on another instrument.  For instance, he might give me E flat alto horn music and have me play it on a French horn.  That required me, in my head, to raise each note ½ step.  Maudine was frequently given music in the treble clef and told to play it on the slide trombone which was in the bass clef.

Clarinets and other reed instruments have pads over each key.  They would come loose and wear out.  Valves on brass instruments would get stuck.  Horns would get dented.  Prof. King taught me how to do all those typers of repairs.  As a graduation requirement, the members of the band who were seniors, were required to write a march.  Each person would write 8 to 16 bars.

I mentioned in another note that almost all kids worked.  One of my jobs was at the soda fountain at the Owl Drug Store.  There were no supermarkets then.  Coleman had several family owned stores that sold meat and groceries.  One of those was across College Avenue from the Owl.  Of my best friends one was Rex H. (Rusty) Jones who worked in the grocery part of that store and another, Wayman (Curly) Beall worked at the meat counter.  All meat was fresh.  Most meat arrived as an entire carcass and the different cuts of meat were separated right in the store.  Today most meat is cut into the different cuts of meat and shipped to super markets sealed in cryopac.  There was no frozen food.  All three of us were in the band.  As seniors both Rusty and Curly played the tuba or sousaphone commonly called a bass horn.

Maudine played piano in churches and at revivals churches sponsored.  She also worked at Coulson’s Drug Store.  We must have had understanding bosses.  Practicing and performing took time but our work hours somehow seemed to have been worked out.

This was the Big Band era addressed in another Note.  Some of us formed a dance band called “The Serenaders.”

We were in high school from September 1943 until May 1947.  In 1942 an Army Air Corps Primary Flying School was built on the northwest part of Coleman.  It existed until 1946.  Today it is the Coleman Municipal Airport.  Students first went to primary school then basic and then advanced.  The school trained young military aviation cadets.  The aircraft used was an open cockpit (no canopy) PT-19.

We had some teachers who had taught in Coleman for years.  Other of our teachers were wives of the instructors or of the cadets.  Some were very good and some were terrible.  Some of those teachers stayed at Coleman when the husbands were transferred elsewhere.  I recall one teacher who would sit on the edge of her desk and at least once a week would say “I just love football players.”

Another teacher was Mrs. Dowdy who taught foreign languages.  I took three years of Spanish in high school.  During our third year we could not speak English in class.

One day a test in geometry was scheduled for which I was not prepared.  It was the third period of the day.  Between the second and third period I sneaked into the chemistry lab and mixed up some H2S or hydrogen sulfide.  That gas has an odor of rotten eggs.  Classes were let out until the smell dissipated.  No test that day.  To this very day I am glad it was never discovered who had been in the chemistry lab.

I vividly recall another teacher.  Her husband was in the Army Air Corps.  I thought I knew a lot about the military.  She came to class one day and told us her husband had killed a lot of Japanese when he threw a hand grenade 300 yards.  I asked her if she was sure it was 300 yards and not feet.  She said she had the letter right there and it was 300 yards.  She then asked if I was questioning her.  I replied that of course I was not.  We had been taught that you were not tp question what a teacher said.

She sent me to the principal’s office stating I had been insubordinate and impolite.  The principal asked me what the story was.  I told him.  He said he was going to give me to licks with a paddle.  Before he could do so I walked out of school and went to my dad’s shop.  He asked me why I was not in school.  I related the facts to him.  He took me back to school for a meeting with the principal and the teacher.  My father told them he had been in the Army in WWI and he had never seen a hand grenade thrown 300 yards that perhaps the teacher meant 300 feet.  She said it was 300 yards.  My father said that her husband must have the strongest arm in the world and wondered how a pilot got into a situation where he was under fire by ground troops.  He also said that the principal could give me two licks not because of what happened in the classroom but because I walked out of school.

When World War II broke out most privately owned airplanes were acquired by the Army.  On the southeastern part of town a man named Ray Gilliam had a flying field.  He had an old Taylorcraft and an old Piper Cub that the Army had not wanted.  He also had an old Ford Tri-motor airplane.  Almost all civilian airplanes before the War had wooden or metal frames covered in fabric.  The Ford Tri-motor was a cargo or passenger airplane covered in aluminum.  Gilliam was restoring the airplane.  The Ford Tri-motor had first been built in 1926.  I think the last one was built in about 1932.

Some of the wiring and cables in the Tri-Motor was in a narrow trough running from the cockpit in the nose to the wings and then to the tail.  I had been fascinated with airplanes and sometimes just hung around the field and hangar.  Gilliam was having a hard time running new wiring and cable.  I was watching and asked if I could help.  I only weighed about 112 and could reach and fit into places Gilliam could not.  I helped wire and cable the airplane and was soon doing other unskilled little things.  Gilliam said he could not pay me but would give me lessons.  The Piper and Taylorcraft did not have a tail wheel.  They had a tail skid.

One of the first airplanes available for purchase in late 1945 was the Bilanca Cruisair.  It had a tricycle landing gear.  It flew much faster that the Piper or Taylorcraft and landed at about 60 miles per hour which was a little less that the cruising speed of the Piper and T-Craft.  Gilliam bought one of the first Bilancas available.  Flying that was so much different that the other planes and landing it was a whole new experience.

One day Gilliam told me that I was ready to solo and could do so the next day.  I was so excited.  I went home and told my mother.  She did not know I been taking lessons.  Once I told her that ended my trips to the airfield.

The bandroom was in the basement of the high school.  During the summer between my sophomore and junior years some work was done in the room next to the bandroom.  It was made into a room where kids could hangout after school.  There was a jukebox in it.

Across the street and around the corner was an empty building.  Between my junior and senior year the room next to the bandroom was returned to active school use.  In the empty building, tables, chairs and the jukebox were moved there.  It was named “The Hitching Post.”  A lady named Addie Rose White was hired to run it.  It was open after school.  Addie Rose taught me how to play bridge there.  You could also dance.

It was common for boys and girls to cruise up and down Commericial Avenue, the main street.  At least those who could borrow the cars of their parents or ride with one who could.

One night I had borrowed my father’s 1936 Chevrolet.  It had something called “free wheeling” which was engaged by pulling out a knob on the dash board.  It was something similar to overdrive in today’s car.  My friend Rusty also had his mother’s car.  My friend Max wanted to know if he could drive my dad’s car.  I let him.  My dad never found out.  Max took his girl friend out into the country about four or five miles and parked for a while.  When he got ready to return to town he could not get the car to move in reverse.  He and the girl walked back to town and found Rusty and me.  Max was pretty concerned that he had damaged the car.  Max, the girl, Rusty and I went to where Max had left the car.  I got in the car, started it with no trouble, pushed the free wheeling knob in, shifted to reverse and drove the car right out.  With the free wheeling knob out the car would not run in reverse.  Max did not know that and I forgot to tell him.  Max was embarrased and the girl was furious.

Favorite places for kids to hand out were the soda fountains in the drug stores during the day and the Dixie Pig and Village Grill, mentioned in another story, at night.

The school newspaper was called “The Roundup.”  In my sophomore and junior years I wrote the Band column for the newspaper.  For graduation I assisted in writing the class prophecy and the class will.