Summertime Activities

Summer on the ranch growing up meant swim lessons and music lessons in town for the cousins and our family.  My mom and two aunts would take turns being the chauffeur for the group. The younger kids would stay at home with the mom who wasn't making the trip to town. The five oldest kids all played an instrument:  Bob played the tuba, Dick the trumpet, I played the flute, Don the clarient and Dave the saxaphone.  In the summer, the band director wanted everyone to come to sectionals at which our individual instrument group practiced the music.  Since we all played a different instrument, we all had different times we needed to be at school.  Later my brother learned play the trombone and my sister the French horn, but they were not old enough at the time to be part of this adventure.

We all also took swimming lessons, which were sandwiched between the different music lesson times. The high school swimming pool was quite a step up from messing around in the muddy pond in the pasture after an occasional big rain. Needless to say, it made for a hectic schedule for the mom in town with five kids in one car (and we did not have SUVs or minivans). We all packed a lunch and ate in the park between lessons; fast food was not a way of life then. But the cousins loved being together since there was no school for socializing. Everyone was tired on the ride home and having been in the pool we were all a little damp squeezed together in the car with a trunk full of instruments (except the tuba which stayed at school).

When we were in high school and old enough to drive, we would go to town together to practice in the band for marching in the three Frontier Days parades. This happened in the evening when it was cooler and kids were more available.  Again, we enjoyed interacting with each other and with our friends from school, especially as teenagers we were quite interested in the opposite sex.  We would practice the music and marching up and down the shady tree-lined streets of the neighborhood around school.  Marching in a straight line and turning the corners with precision while playing your instrument took concentration.  I played the piccalo in the marching band and loved playing the Sousa marches, especially Stars and Stripes Forever.

I enjoyed the change of pace from ranch life and the chance to get be around other kids in the summer as I am sure even the kids in town did.