2024, Family, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Bugle Boy

25 Comments

Yesterday morning I received the following text from our son:

Your grandson just woke me up with a bugle. I hope you are proud.

I told him I was very proud! Son said he was in the middle of a pleasant dream in which he was eating gelato when the bugle went off .

In March of 2023 our then 4 year old grandson was stranded at our house for three weeks due to weather. While he was here we let him play my father’s bugle. He got a pretty good buzz on the horn. My dad was a bugler in the Army Air Corps. Of course, the bugle went back to South Dakota with him. I hadn’t heard that he was doing much with it until yesterday. I am delighted he woke up his dad with the bugle. That just made my day!

My first instrument was the clarinet. I quickly switched to the bass clarinet and played it all through high school and college. Piano lessons started at age 8. Son was a trombonist. Daughter played piano, French Horn, and violin. Husband has his cello and also had piano lessons as a child. I don’t know what grandson will play, but at least he has a bugle to make great noises with for now.

What were some mischievous things you did as a child? Did you learn to play an instrument?

25 thoughts on “Bugle Boy”

  1. I’m sure my friend Sandy and I plotted things with our younger sisters, but I can’t come up with any details. I do remember eating the frosting off the tops of some cupcakes once, that were not meant for me, and getting spanked.

    I started piano lessons around age 7, and then – does anyone else remember getting a flutofone – kind of like a plastic recorder – in grade school? 4th Grade, everyone in class was given one and got lessons right there.

    Took up the cello in jr. high but quit orchestra in Sophomore year, kind of regretted it later. Discovered the guitar when my best h.s. friend got one, was easy for me to learn since I play by ear, at least to chord – I never learned the classical method.

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  3. I was a goody-two-shoes as a kid, so no dirt to dish on myself in that respect.

    We were a family of musicians too, and I became a band director, so I learned cornet/trumpet. french horn, a bit of guitar, enough piano to pass my college piano proficiency exam to get my teaching certificate. In addition, I had to learn the basics on all band instruments (plus cello–my one string instrument).

    Because of the small size of the school I taught at, when I started a jazz ensemble, I had to play drums one year and bass one year.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. I was terrified of getting into trouble as a kid. My brothers were too. We were little angels. My youngest brother and I sometimes did mischievous pranks to tease our middle brother though. Maybe that’s why he won’t talk to us now.

    My mom gave me a classical guitar when I was eight. I also had a zither with the sheets you could slide underneath the strings, and a flutophone (as noted by Barbara above.) I moved on to piano lessons and started playing flute when I was 13.

    I put the guitar away for several years, convinced I couldn’t play it well. Some friends were playing music around a bonfire at the Stone House every Wednesday night and I began to realize that I could play everything they were playing. They didn’t know I could play. I gathered my courage one Wednesday evening and brought my guitar and played along. It was so much fun and it felt great. I moved on to mandolin playing in 1993.

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      1. I live about as high on the bluffs as you can live in Mankato. I live in an apartment building with no basement. Sandra lives lower down, but the river walls would have to collapse and it would have to be an epic flood to reach her. More storms coming this afternoon and tonight.

        The weather service keeps warning of “areal” floods. It is a word, but it irks me. Whoever writes their messages has a gift for finding or inventing words like that. I keep thinking areal floods will be in the air, which they sort of have been.
        Clyde

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        1. I thought I had a decent vocabulary. I’ve never heard “areal” before. It reminds of the ubiquitous and prolific “verbing” of nouns.

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  6. I never dared be mischievous. I did not learn to play an instrument. It was not utilitarian, to use a word from the 19th century.
    Also clyde

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    1. I just heard that they’re evacuating “below the dam.” That’s a poorly defined area since most of old Mankato and the downtown area are below the dam. I’m so sorry, Mankato.

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  8. I started playing the piano when I was five. We had a piano, although I’m not sure why because neither of my parents played – maybe they were thinking of the future and thought one of the girls would like to play eventually.

    Anyway, I remember when I was in the seventh grade and the vocabulary changed from “she’s taking piano lessons” to “she’s studying piano.” I felt very proud about that. I ended up studying piano right up until I went off to Carleton. I don’t play much these days- some of that because I really need to get the piano tuned and some of it’s just loss of habit.

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  9. Better Late than Never, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    My day got away from me with all kinds of things. We were out to the MN Veterans Home for the first time in years to visit Lou’s uncle. What a beautiful facility now–forty five years ago it was not.

    I was constantly in trouble for the things I did: I stuck my scissors in an electrical outlet, I pulled a chair out from under my aunt (ala Three Stooges),I ran away from home, and I played near the well. I spent my early years either getting spanked or with my nose in the corner. My sister, however, was gross. She pooped in the kiddy pool, so I filled it with grass to cover up the poop. Then I got in trouble for the grass but my sister did not get in trouble for the poop. Hmph.

    I played the clarinet with a great deal of success. That paid my way about halfway through college.

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