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Inspiration

When my wife, son, and I traveled to different locations in Colorado every summer in our motorhome, we’d meet my wife’s mother and father in their “rig” at a recreational vehicle (RV) park. The state had many tourist attractions, and one of the places we visited was an ancient cliff dwelling which I enjoyed. When we returned home, I researched the Anasazi Indians who had lived there, and discovered they had mysteriously disappeared from the area around the 14th century or earlier. When I began writing I found it to be an interesting subject, where I was able to use my “spiritual” imagination.

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What better setting for a tale about voices of the opera than Italy. I got the idea of turning Lorenzo’s vocal cords into humanized sub-characters, who play the part of soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and baritone voices. I checked my medical books and discovered there are two main vocal cords and two shadow vocal chords. So I decided to take artistic liberties and combine them into four full vocal cords. Since Lorenzo, the main character, didn’t know what was going on, I figured I could get away with it.

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How could I present strings in a different way? My best ideas came to me in the shower or on my recliner, so I opted for the latter. It worked! Within a short time, the concept of featuring the bows came to mind. I wanted to have a variety of styles of music for strings, so I used the acoustic bass for jazz and the banjo for country. As the story developed, I realized it was something like a Walt Disney movie, and figured that wasn’t too bad. The story is light and funny and I hope you’ll like it.

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Inspiration

When my mother was teaching school in a Mexican community between 1910-14, the civil war was raging, causing great upheaval. Poncho Villa’s rabble and other revolutionary armies had at one time or other encamped in the local plaza with their soldaderas (camp followers). For the young women of the community, shopping under those dangerous conditions was a terrifying experience. My mother’s description of the perilous events with fear still etched in her eyes came to mind when I wrote this short narrative.

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I’ve whistled my way through life. As a kid, people in my neighborhood could hear me coming a half-a-block away. Even when I became a school band director, I whistled through the hallways past the classrooms (In California they were outside). I never received a complaint from the staff or was ever reprimanded by the principal. I think the reason being they liked my whistling.

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In January of 1950, I toured the American air force bases in Newfoundland, Labrador, and Greenland, playing trombone with the Bobby Byrnes Band. Traveling by airplane was a new experience and exciting for a 19 year old. While in Greenland, a captain asked my best friend Johnny Bova and I if we wanted to go hunting on the ice cap the next morning. We accepted, and it seemed like we had barely gone to bed when he woke us up, and asked if we were still interested in going. We both replied yes! A sergeant came along carrying a large canvas sack that held rifles. Our objective was to shoot ptarmigans, a white bird native to the area, which turned brown during the summer. During the hunt, we shot a total of 31 birds, that the chef turned into a delicious gourmet dinner that night at the officer’s club.

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Inspiration

A short story in our local newspaper in Port Chester, NY, in the early 1950’s caught my eye, because it mentioned the ice cap of Greenland. A buried American B-17 bomber had been discovered on the ice cap after having been missing since the Second World War. The article said the airplane was being flown to England when it got lost in a blizzard as it was about to land to refuel. The crew got out safely, but the bomber remained buried and hidden for many years. I could relate to that story. I remembered when we flew to Greenland how difficult it had been to land at BW-1 Air Force Base. After flying over the fjords with our wing tips almost touching the mountains on either side, the plane then had to make a sudden right turn into a slightly uphill runway. Since I had already written one Eskimo story, I thought this might be an interesting sequel.

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Being a retired school band director with years of experience teaching kids to play in small rock and jazz groups, I felt qualified to write this story. I used a “today” rock group in conjunction with Merlin the Magician as the center of the plot, even though they were total opposites. I thought it was a unique idea for a fun story. Hold on to your hats for the battle of your life!

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When I was 12 years old, the City of Port Chester, New York, ran a summer recreation program during summer vacation. Park Avenue School, the school I attended, was one of the sites selected. I went there to play softball but saw horseshoes sitting in the sandpit and started pitching. I liked it right away. It wasn’t long before I was hooked and started tossing at 9:00 am every morning, continued till 12:00 noon, ran home for lunch, and then returned at 1:00 pm. I’d pitch until 5:00 pm. At home, I found a couple of real horseshoes in the garage with jagged ends that had small rusty nails in them. They had been left there years before when the garage was a horse stable. My father found something similar to metal stakes and pounded them into the ground. I began practicing before and after dinner. At sunset, I’d attach handkerchiefs to the stakes, then played until it was too dark. After two months of practice every shot I made was a ringer. At the end of summer, I signed up for the cities senior horseshoe tournament at the main park. When I arrived, I found that the distance between stakes was further than what I’d been playing, but adjusted immediately. When the games began, I beat every old codger one by one and became city champ. I received a fancy blue ribbon and never played the game again.

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Inspiration

I was reading a large volume about the American Revolution when I came upon the section about the “Battle of Trenton.” I recollected that Mrs. Logan, my fourth grade teacher at Park Avenue Elementary School in Port Chester, NY, had read us a story about George Washington and his victorious army at Trenton. For some reason or other it had remained vivid in my memory. Since I knew the area in New Jersey and Pennsylvania where I had toured more than once with big bands, I thought I’d write a children’s story based on this battle. It would take place in that very area, but with a different twist, this has two stories written as one. The first part is historical-nonfiction which continues without a break into the second half of the story that is fiction. Besides the book I was reading, I researched other books including the encyclopedia, and was amazed how close in detail the accounts were about the same story. All the authors must have had Mrs. Logan as their teacher. I hope this story will inspire you to read more about George Washington and how our great country won its independence.

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