MT-WTF

 This has been a bad writing week. The holiday activities interfered over the weekend, and I did get 3K words in on Tuesday, but I set myself up for some rough writing.

First, my favorite side character tragically died. That was hard to write. I've done it before, with a knockout scene in a throwaway writing exercise, but it wasn't a major investment with a character I really liked.

Second, no spoilers, I had to write a second awful event that hit close to home, and while it was easy to dredge up the details, it was difficult to purge and find any catharsis in it. I'm still not happy with the scene, but that's what first drafts are for.

Third, I'm winding down to the end of the book, and I have to find a way to wrap up all the various plots going on in a fit manner that still creates and holds the tension to the very end.

And finally, this is the Elks Weekend.

I grew up in a drum and bugle corps, from the time I was ten. It may have been a little earlier, since my older sister was in the local all-girl corps, and I would sneak her bugle out and play it when I was eight or so. When I turned eighteen, I joined another corps nearby, Blue Rock, this time being one of the few girls in the all-male horn line that had just decided to allow girls in. 

Read Bob Cook's memoir, My Seven Decades in Drum Corps Adventures for an idea of how that worked out. It was the best time of my life.

Some thirty-five years later, I found a local alumni corps to play with, and the director made me music instructor. I not only got to play horn, but also got to arrange music for the corps. I got pretty good at it. I'd like to think I had a hand in getting them to win the National title for small corps. Along the way, I also won some medals for individuals competitions.

So, Elks Weekend... In the heyday of drum corps in NJ, there were two state competitions: VFW and American Legion. These coincided with their state conventions in Wildwood, NJ. New Jersey in the 1940s through 1960s had drum corps in almost every town. Some towns even had two, or three, or seven (Newark). The weekend involved a contest in the daytime and a parade at night. It was glorious, watching corps after corps after corps.

Vietnam did away with a lot of drum corps, with all the 18-yr-olds heading off and many not coming back, as famed blues man Walter Trout (drum corps alumnus) noted. The state contests went away. Then drum corps itself changed into something different, and wasn't worth the watching.

But alumni corps and senior corps, with us aging old-school players, got recruited by the Elks for their parade in Wildwood. And, while many of the old corps were gone, we all still went down to Wildwood for reunions and to watch the parade with the old gang marching, always from Kelly's Bar. Blue Rock had some outstanding reunions, including one where we put together an alumni corps to play a few of the old tunes. Spectacular!

My favorite corps of all-time, the Blessed Sacrament Golden Knights, gave a concert at their motel at night after the parade every year, and I always tried to go. A few years ago one of the guys, who recognized Jack and me from various alumni shows, said, "You two should join us." Just like that. So we did.

The Elks weekend has become a high point of the year now. While I can't march an entire parade, I still get to "jump in de line" when the corps got to the judging point and continue through to Kelly's Bar. This year, I'm going to try to march the whole parade, which has been shortened. Then, after the concert at the motel that night, Jack's little band Gerry and the Deals (which includes my two sons) will be playing for the Blue Rock reunion. 

But the bottom line here is that I won't be doing any writing.