Daughter recently purchased a condo, and she has been busy nesting and settling in. We still have quite a bit of her stuff, including a collection of Russian nesting dolls and her baby china. I hope we can get it to her in Tacoma and get it out of our basement.
We have her French Horn in our basement as well. It is a lovely Conn French Horn we got for her in Middle School. She was a really good French Horn player, and even made it into Junior High All-State Band. Then disaster hit and she needed braces on her teeth. She never could play all that well again, but she played all through High School.
I asked her the other day if I could donate her horn to the local high school. It is truly a lovely instrument, and would be greatly appreciated. She surprised me by saying she wants to start playing it again. She said many of her middle school therapy clients talk about their band and orchestra experiences and she realized how much she missed playing her horn.
The horn hasn’t been touched for more than 12 years. Husband and I took it to a music store in Sioux Falls on Tuesday and upon examination they said it was in great shape. The valves all worked and everything was movable. They are going to clean it all up, though, and lubricate it. We will ship it to her after that. Now that she hasn’t braces on her teeth, perhaps she really will play again. I also hope this means she will start playing her violin again.
Did you have braces? Did you play in band or orchestra in school? If you have kids, still have their stuff in your home?
Trail Baboon 
Ha ha ha. I still have my kid! So of course I’ve got all her stuff.
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I had no fun with dental stuff when I was a preteen and teen. Anatomically I have a small mouth. I also had extra teeth so I had to have teeth pulled and wear a retainer while the second set grew in then those were pulled and then I had braces for 2 1/2 years. And I don’t know if it was other people‘s experience but getting the braces tightened/adjusted was just excruciating so every few weeks there would be a day or two where I couldn’t eat solid food after the adjustment. Then more retainers after the braces came off. It was about 4 1/2 years from beginning to end and it was just awful.
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This is your chance to splurge a bit. Pack all of that tightly into boxes and book yourselves a round trip from the Cities to Tacoma on the Empire Builder train. Get a sleeper and enjoy the ride both ways. The boxes will go as your checked bags, and your other luggage will be a generous suitcase that rides in the luggage rack on the sleeper car. The added space in the basement will be your compensation for the added expense of the sleeper.
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for only $3000 he can do the job of a stamp
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Opportunities to splurge are so rare, after all…
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my daughter played piano for a number of years and then took up Trumpet just before middle school and then had her braces installed, but her Trumpet teacher was tremendous and had a system where you put a piece of foam feet like a stick of gum over the top of your braces and that keeps you from cutting up your lips. It worked beautifully, but she decided she didn’t like the band teacher so she switched to choir has a keyboard and a guitar and a microphone for recording her TikTok and YouTube videos she’s pretty good. I hope to pick up that Trumpet someday I just love Trumpet.
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No braces but my kids both had them and my granddaughters are both suffering with them right now.
I’ve talked on the Trail previously about my school band experiences. I started in grade school with the cornet. I was usually second chair, the first chair occupied by a kid whose dad was a music teacher. Some time in middle school the band teacher asked me if I would be willing to switch to French horn. The horn belonged to the school. Later, I was transitioned again to a baritone horn and, again, the horn was borrowed from the school. I don’t know what became of my cornet. Likely my parents sold it.
I played baritone into high school but the band became a marching band in service to performance at football game halftimes. I hated marching and marching practice, so much so that I left the band. That left me without an instrument.
In much later years I bought a baritone horn on eBay and had it reconditioned and also picked up a decent trumpet at an estate sale. I fiddled around with the baritone for a couple of years but discovered that most of the music for baritone or euphonium was in bass clef and I, as a former trumpet player, was accustomed to treble clef. The muscle memory for fingerings in treble clef was strong but I couldn’t reprogram them (at my advanced age) to respond to bass clef so I gave up and sold it.
At the music store where my baritone was cleaned and reconditioned, I asked if they knew of any bands that were seeking donations and in fact they had one for which they collected instruments. I donated the trumpet, along with enough money to have the instrument cleaned and serviced.
For many years we still had boxes of our kids’ stuff in the basement but that has all been dispersed now. The flow has shifted and now we are trying to offload stuff on our kids, though there isn’t much they want. Robin also had/has a casual collection of matryoshka dolls as well but she has given a couple to the granddaughters.
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