Trumpets and White Bucks

Bud and Steve took music lessons (trumpet) from Lottie Anthony for a while. She’d come to the house and set up class in the livingroom. To this day a trumpet is my favorite brass instrument. We had our own family “orchestra” of sorts: Dad on the sax, Mom on the guitar, the boys on their trumpets and me on the marimba. We had a lot of fun playing together at home and at church.

The family theme song became "Mansion Over the Hilltop." But Bud and I had a duet we did together once: “He Bought My Soul.”

We all sang together too. Solos, duets, trios. Music was like breathing. When baby brother Tom came along, he played a little plastic toy trumpet until he was old enough to learn to play like the big brothers. Then they played trios. Or a quartet with the three trumpets and Dad on the saxophone.

Wish I had a recording of these musical ministries...

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My big brother attended and graduated from North High, Des Moines, where he played his trumpet in the marching band.

White bucks (white suede shoes for those who don’t know) were "in" back in the mid '50's. He begged and pleaded and finally Mom took him to the store and bought him a pair. He proudly wore them to school the next day. And was really upset when someone "initiated" his clean white bucks by spitting on them then stepping in the spit and rubbing it in with his own dirty shoe. Awwww.

You can imagine how surprised I was when he used food coloring mixed with the white shoe polish to dye his white bucks pink and green to march in the band for the next football game. (North colors used to be pink and green for the northern lights colors). Anything for the school spirit.

I always thought he looked so cool in his band uniform!