Some time in the year 1991, around spring, I sold the last of my two trumpets. Bright, shiny, silvery specks of what my future was to hold. Now, they were gone. Along with them, went the confident youth, who once marched down the field of half time, twirling his trumpet on his third finger until it spun into a spherical beacon that could not be ignored. This always drove the band director nuts. Not so much as when I let go of the twirling horn, and watching it fly fifty feet in the air, until it is caught in my knowing hands, and brought too the lips in time for the grand finale. Now they were gone.

I had no problem selling the Bach Stradivarius. It was a gorgeous, old horn, recently re-dipped. That is, with in the past ten years. I put it in the local paper, and it was picked up immediately. I was working at Subway Sandwiches at the time. My best friend managed the place, and my experience in the food industry didn't hurt either. I sold it to a mom, pop, and son who came in one night to the Subway. We had no customers towards the end of the night. The boy was going into high school, and I was selling a steal of a horn for 400 bucks. The point wasn't the money, it was the horn. It had to be passed on.

Being a trumpet player is exclusive to those that are driven to that particular mouthpiece. When you hear it in your heart, it screams through your soul, and no one denies or argues the horn. It is to be heard. It is to be listened to. It cannot be denied. Then again, it might never play again.

A golden horn locked in the attic that someone's grandfather once owned. To lie in wait like only a fine sculpted piece of lacquered metal could do. Waiting with what it has seen, and wishing for what it will see next.

I bought the horn from a hero of mine. He was the local punk, who believed in the definition of rebellion, as well as the spirit. He was a good friend of mine from the old neighborhood. He was the one with a Mustang, 69' of course. It was the car he built. It was the life he led. It was the freshman he remembered from the neighborhood pool. That time when you had that kid in a headlock. It was this same freshman that came towards him with a horn, and threatened to be in the marching band. Only, he wouldn't get to meet me that first day of summer band practice. I would be detained, ever so shortly, by the seniors and their rights of passage that seemed to disappear the day I became a junior. Just like the sexual revolution, some magazine published that maybe it isn't so nice to let bullies flush scared freshmen in toilet bowls, and then drag them out to the parking lot, in a head-lock, to be dropped off at a deserted, secluded, near to nothing grave yard with instructions to dig up a casket it two hours or be buried as deep as you dug. Okay, it didn't take me long to just start walking home.

I think what he saw most of all is when I came back. Only at that time could he, as a rebel, step in. That was the only moment he could get between things enough to make such a small deal out of leaving me alone. He did it by inviting me to look at Amy's rear-end.

When Eric Jones became a senior, he quit band. By that time I had been able to successfully steer every underclassman away from an inition, as long as he held a trumpet. We could stick together. I was the one to say, don't mind them. Your okay. Together they will leave us all alone.

That's from my younger years in Kentucky, pronouncing the state motto every morning, after singing the pledge of allegiance. Yeah, we sang that song every morning, and quoted: "United we stand, Divided we fall!”

I would like to think that I snapped a pattern out of high school. Truth of the matter is that I only changed it in the period of time I was there. A new pattern has played itself out over twelve times since I was there. That pattern is getting worse.

I bought the trumpet from Eric with a 500-dollar loan from my parents. I was working at McDonalds at the time. My parents didn't know much about me, but they knew I would be that great trumpet player I was always mad to be. If I didn't know anything about my life, I knew what I would be doing. Now, it was all gone.

It is of little matter why the dream died. Why my heart broke, and I have behaved heart broken ever since.

My other horn was a Yamaha. It was also silver, and more steel. It had a tinny sound that I liked. That one; I dumped it at a pawnshop to let some one who needed it get it cheap. Twenty-five dollars, and I went to the closest watering hole. The next day, I moved on.

Now, I have been very poor for almost eleven years. I have always worked. I have never stopped. I kept going. Sometimes, times were good. Every time I get a chance, if I find myself with an extra 200 dollars, I will spend a day bopping around the pawnshops looking for coronets, or trumpets. I look for horns.

At first, I was intending to pick the horn back up, and give it a real try this time. Then, I remembered what I was doing. How I have changed. Why I moved on. It’s almost too much like going back and admitting old defeats.

Still, the love of the horn is born in the heart, and can never be given back.

When I was in college, I had another friend who was, along with myself, on the trumpet scholarship. He was a trumpet player. He lived it, breathed it, and bled it. It was my experiences with him that made me agree with my instructor when he told me I was not a trumpet player. I worked too hard at playing the horn. I didn't really know a damn thing about it. Or music for that matter. High school was all about competition. Play these pieces, and learn to sight-read. Do it now. Even in my private lessons, I only received a small amount of theory. These were the facts in my belief that it was time for me to go. That was about all it was. Time to go. What's next?

So I will take an extra 200 bucks, and by a horn. A quick stop to the music shop, and I have valve oil, slide grease, snake brush, mouthpiece brush, and polishing cloth. I give the horn a good tub cleaning. Dry, and apply the oil and grease. Play a few notes to remind me where my chops have gone. Go back and pawn the puppy for a quick 50 bucks, and hit the town.

I'll let some dedicated band director hunt for the bargain, and put it in the hands of another crazy dreamer in fifth grade. It's the least I can do. At times, it was all that I had.

001030-jm (Radar3064)