Over 50 years ago, I made the trek up seven flights of stairs in Central Junior High; rain, shine, cold or hot with the windows wide open, five days a week, with a hundred-nineteen other kids, all the way to the 3rd floor, or 4th or 4.5th, up the chromatic stairs (seven of them), open the door, and step inside the Band Room, as far as you could possibly get from an outside door, first thing of a hundred-eighty five mornings a year, first hour, for 7th, 8th and 9th grade "musicians" to gather, assemble, and play the music of the day.
Drums sat against the far wall, trumpets and coronets in front of them, French horns, baritones and tubas took the center from front to rear, Mr. Tanzey, the director propped up on a high stool and lecturns walk, to his left were the flutes, clarinets, and back against the door were trombones, obnoxious players with nary a clue to tuning.
Black music stands filled the spaces in front of each player, spit-valves were handy to all, music spread like unequalled flowers, spraying each stand with black on white print, on black stands, that held pencils, used gum, mouth pieces,and the wooden floor held all of us kids and hardware, and coats, and clothes, with books and purses and stacks of notebook paper and Number 2 pencils.
Six years of my life, I spent first hour (and many hours after that) playing the music, reading the notes, (most of them) and joining the "Mrs. Miller's Fan Club and Caney River Carp Association" to play "They Called The Wind Moriah" and "On Wisconsin" and breathe the same air as the other hundred people in the room.
Years have changed the content to computers, desks, flags of indiscriminate color and station, but the floor, the walls, the windows were well over 50 years old, and if you stopped to listen, just listen, you could hear the music, once again.
Ralph Peck
Photos By Ralph Peck
The Band Room,
Central Junior High School
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
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