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When our band marched and played in Ellis, any young horses that happened to be among those hitched to the racks in town would pitch and rear, no matter how well our music had been rehearsed. But the thrill was compounded of much more than that; in front of all the stores, with false fronts instead of second stories, wooden awnings slanted out over the wooden sidewalks, supported as a kind of arcade on wooden posts; when half the town was lined up there to see and hear us, it was swell to be a member of the band.

Our uniforms were simply overalls and caps with long bills, so that when we marched, with red bandannas around our necks, we looked like locomotive engineers. The leader of the band was an engineer, Ed Pearson. He played a cornet. Well, I could read music, because I had taken piano lessons from Miss Cartwright when Della Forker did; moreover, I had practiced on our organ at home until I could play that too. But you can't play an organ with a marching band, and as I was tired of just beating a drum, I bought myself a B-flat clarinet. I tootled and tweetled on that instrument night after night until my mouth was sore.