Youth Choir Tours - First Tour

Some time back Jean Cagle said I ought to write a blog on our youth choir tours. At her request here's an atempt at that. Some of the early ones may run together, so there may be some problems with accuracy, at least pertaining to what year it was.

Although youth choir existed prior to Don Roe becoming our minister of music, it really wasn't well attended until he came. Where there may have been 10 or 12 before, now there were 30. The summer after 9th grade, we took our first choir tour and used the church bus. It was really basically a school bus painted white and it drank oil like crazy. Don Roe drove the bus and that in itself is another story.

Most of the older kids didn't go on the tour, they had summer jobs. I think the only two seniors to go were Pam Vandiver and Carol Brewster. It was good that Pam went because she could be the entire soprano section by herself. I think she went to college at Indiana on a music scholarship and became a big basketball fan. Bobby Knight was the coach and there were winning championships. Anyway, I digress. The older kids, especially the boys, didn't go on the tour and that left the younger guys my age as the oldest group of boys. The tour was to Oklahoma and Kansas.

We were all assigned different duties on the bus. Jerry McKinney, Mike Manire, and Gary were the oil gang. There job was to lug a 5-gallon can of oil from the back of the bus to the front of the refill the engine oil that had leaked or burned away. You got to the engine by lifting a cover insude the bus by the driver. It wasn't outside. Don would holler at the oil gang to get ready and while the bus was still running they would lift the cover off the engine. Then, as we topped a hill Don would shut off the engine and we'd coast downhill. The oil gang would open the oil cap on the engine and start pouring in oil. They did this several times during the trip and would also have to add oil when we stopped for gas.

I was on the gas pumping crew and, I think, on the baggage crew. The gas crew would fill the tank when we stopped for gas and clean the windshield. The baggage crew would load and unload the luggage. There was also a cleanup crew to keep the bus clean and a crew to pass out programs at our concerts. After the concerts we would always have a fun and fellowship time.

My group had a bottle band. Different kinds of bottles were partially filled with water to create a particular note when you blew on them. Most folks played 2 or 3 bottles. I had a big gallon ceramic jug that played the bass note. It looked like a moonshiner's jug so I will always come in late and acting like I was drunk from drinking too much from the jug. Some of the people at the Kansas air force base whre we played were offended by my playing drunk. Drunkedness was a real problem on the base and they didn't think it was proper for me to make fun of it. Anyway, we played a couple of songs and were really pretty good. The finale of the fellowship program was always The Grasshopper Opera. You heard it at my birthday party. On tour that year, I think, Pam played the soprano part, Mrs. Faris did the alto, Don was the tenor, and Al Remette was the bass. They always played like the tenor didn't show up and they had to recruit someone from the audience. Don was the "recruit" and acted like a complete hayseed hillbilly, not a difficult part for him to play. Carol Brewster was the accompanist.

Some things I remember from the tour were that I roomed with Mark Strickland. I was little as a 9th grader but he was itty bitty as a 7th grader. He was always asking me questions about girls. We stopped in Oklahoma City at the amusement park to spend one day. In the parking lot was a brand new cadillac convertible all immaculate and shiny with the top down on the gravel parking lot. Mark and I went over to look at it. As we were looking at it a black guy came up from behind us and said, "Go ahead and put your hands inside the car." We hesitated but he said, "It's OK, it's my car." So, we put our hands in on the steering wheel and the seats. As soon as we stuck our hands inside the car the horn started blasting and the lights started flashing. The guy quickly came over and turned it off. I remember him saying he lived in Chicago and a car without an alarm system would be spare parts in minutes if you didn't have an alarm system.

On the way home I spent a lot of time with Betty Brewster in the back of the bus. Johnny Roe was with Jean Osburn (Cagle). We stopped at a watermelon field somewhere around the Oklahoma border and Denton. Everyone paid a dollar to go into the field and bust open a watermelon or two or three and eat the heart of the melon right there in the field. We had no spoons or forks or towels, so our hands got real messy while we were doing that. Johnny and Jean decided to go back to the bus and, in doing so, Jean cut her leg on the barbed-wire fence. It was bleeding so everyone had to get out of the field and onto the bus. We took Jean to the emergency room at the Denton hospital before we went home. She got a few stitches and was fine but we had to wait around for an hour or two while it was getting done.

All in all, choir tour was a blast and everyone wanted to go again the next year. Kids still got summer jobs but they made sure they could get off for tour. It was a big boost to attendance.