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The Ellis band could turn a dull day into a time of rich excitement any time it marched and played. I was a part of that excitement. Even before getting out of high school they had used me in this organization of railroad employees to play the snare drum, and my friend, Charlie Keagy, played the bass drum. Thanks to my father's drilling and my membership in the drum corps, I had become a good drummer, but all the time I drummed I knew there were sweeter instruments. Hell, you could not serenade a girl with a drum!

My big brother Ed played a tuba in the band, and Joe McMahon played a slide trombone. We three slept in the same attic room at home; Joe was boarding with us, because his Irish father, a section foreman, who had become road master, had retired and moved the nice McMahon family to Kansas City, and Joe wanted to stay on in Ellis to serve out the final year of his apprenticeship in the machinist trade.

Almost every night we three had a pillow fight that did not end until I, the smallest, was so mad that I was chasing them with a baseball bat. They teased me at home, they teased me in the shop and they teased me at band practice. In all the small towns I knew, band practice was first of all a device for fun; it gave an excuse for getting out at night, and hence a chance to meet the other boys and girls of other parents just as strict as yours.