I just learned that one of my favorite music teachers, Mr. Donald Fretty, passed away today. I don't have any other details yet. But, I just wanted to tell you about him, because I'm sitting here crying and it just seems so sad, but I have nobody else to really talk to (it's 11:30 p.m., too late to call anyone).
This is Mr. Fretty....we called him "D.W.," (his first and middle initials). He always sounded horribly muffled when he picked up the microphone and said, "BAND, TAKE THE FIELD..." at the beginning of every football game...and at halftime. It really actually sounded more like, "BNNNND, DAAAKKKEE NNNAAA FEEEEELD."
Since I played the flute and piccolo, my fingers were frozen a lot during marching band, often from playing that annoying fight song of ours in the rain, but we trudged on and made our famous (and slightly crooked) R and P (for Reeths-Puffer High School), no matter what. We trudged through the mud, the snow, the sleet, the hail...you name it...Michigan weather sucks.
"Reeths Puffer, we're for you,
fighting what'e'er we do,
For the green, and the white,
Reeths-Puffer fight fight fight...RAH RAH RAH...
We all are here to cheer,
for you we have no fear,
For the green, and the white,
Reeths Puffer fight fight fight."
But, we were just silly lame high school kids, who sold all kinds of CRAP in order to buy new school uniforms---every time we turned around, we had to sell something else as a fund raiser. We sold candy bars, we sold plastic see-through Christmas ornaments, we sold popcorn in tins, we sold picture frames and other do-dads that nobody really needs. Door to door, trying to win a prize for the most orders.
Oh, and those brand new uniforms WE never got to wear, by the way, we graduated before they bought 'em, the lousy slobs---so we busted our BUTTS to get them for all these young whippersnappers who NOW are State and National Champions in the Marching Band Competition every year.
We actually sucked at marching in football games, to be honest, but we did our best, and we tried hard, and we set the stage for those young-uns to take over and do better than we ever dreamed of doing. Our school mascot was the Rocket-Man....yes, a man in a rocket suit....you wonder why I love all things phallic?!! Elton John droning on in the background....that song still annoys me to this day, because it's been hammered into my psyche so much from high school. "Yes I think it's gonna be a long, long time, when touch down brings me 'round again to find...another man they think I am at home...oh no no no...I'm the Rocket Man...."
GAAAAAA. So we'd go out there and play EYE OF THE TIGER....yes, yes we really did that one... it was popular at the time. We kind of massacred it, but dammit most people knew what it was then. We played Sweet Georgia Brown, Sir Duke, and we played THRILLER even. That one was cool. I can't remember the other tunes, but I still have most of them in my folder full of sheet music.
My best friend Laurie was a "flag girl," actually, so she put down her trumpet and picked up a flag, and waved it around, nearly poking out the eyes of the rest of us who had to march past her every Friday night after school at these football games. I remember using those horrid, stupid "mini music stands" that were attached to my flute and piccolo...with the wind whipping the music all over the place, the thing couldn't stand up straight without rolling around to face downward at the ground...very annoying. So mostly I just memorized the music and tossed the stupid mini music stand to the curb.
"Go back, go back, go back to the woods....your team ain't got no spirit and your coach ain't no good!"
Yeah, we yelled that cheer all the time, and then played the fight song whenever we got a touchdown, while sitting in the stands keeping warm with cups of weak, watery hot cocoa with fake tiny marshmallows in it that cost $2.00 a cup. (I may be exaggerating, but I take poetic license for that). It was more money than I had, so it doesn't really matter much what the price really was then.
The faded vinyl white spats on my black tennis shoes tripped me up sometimes....they came unsnapped a lot....and the feathery plume on my over-sized hat often slid off my head...couldn't do much about it though. My (what were supposed to be) "white" gloves, (with the fingers snipped off rather crookedly), were a grubby mess. My lips were always chapped from the wind and the cold. I became addicted to chapstick. My eyes watered from the wind, too, and my feet were numb and frozen, but despite all these silly annoying things, MARCHING BAND WAS FUN.
And Mr. Fretty had the patience of a saint. He really did.
Of course, we all thought he was an old fuddy duddy. He had a "jazz" band, too, (which I could never get into because I had classical music brainwashed in my soul for most of my life), but really...the man was more like Lawrence Welk. "And a one-ah, and a two-ah and a three-ah...." and we'd all roll our eyeballs at him, bored from some of the lame music we had to play. Things that were either too easy, or not very popular to play. You can only stand so much John Phillip Sousa, ya know??
Nearly every week, this super smart (eventual VALEDICTORIAN) chick who was sitting next to me, Kelley, would challenge me for first chair. Now, I was first chair for 3 years, mind you...I worked hard at playing that flute and piccolo, but this pain in the patoot kept trying to take away my number one status....and she was GOOD, too....she had parents who could afford to send her to flute lessons after school. She had a much better embochure than I did, she had (did I spell that right)?!, she had better control of her diaphragm than I did, she could hold a note longer than me....but I, on the other hand, could whip through the fast moving songs because I had "lightening fingers." I could hit every note even in a long piece of 16th notes strung together, even when going super fast, and so my dexterity was better than hers. (To this day, she claims that she never felt she was better than me, she always admired how fast I could play). But I still say she was much better.
Mr. Fretty was fair, and so she and I shared the title of First Chair Flute back and forth, one week it was me, the next it was her. It was a rivalry that made band challenging for me, because I took lessons for one month TOPS, and hated it...."too-koo-too-koo-too-koo," over and over and over, (woodwinds have to learn to articulate and do staccato ya know, and frankly it was annoying). I liked to slur much better, because my fingers could move much faster, and I loved that. I would whip through a song at a faster rate than Kelly every could. But it didn't sound as pretty or as articulated as her version did.
Mr. Fretty also conducted us during Pep Rallies, and basketball games. I was in the PEP BAND too. We would sit in the locker-room-sweat-smelling gymnasium, on the hard-as-brick bleachers that pulled out of the walls, and try to whip up a frenzy in the crowd with our cheers and our music playing.
"Is that there a basketball?
YES THAT IS A BASKETBALL!
Is that there the WINNING TEAM?
YES, WE ARE the WINNING TEAM!
Is that there the LOSING TEAM?!
YES THEY ARE THE LOOOOOOOOOOOOSING TEAM!
BASKETBALL! BASKETBALL!!
WINNING TEAM! WINNING TEAM!
LOSING TEAM! LOOOOOOOSING TEAM!!
YEAHHHHH!!!!"
Oh, we were ruthless, this group of band fags and me. Yeah, everybody called us the band "fags," because "we were so GAY," you know. Tell that to one of our RP band members NOW, you worthless BUMS. They are now State and National Marching Band CHAMPIONS, did I mention that?! NOW, as a matter of fact, being in the band is COOL!!
But back then, we were the dorks, but we paved the way for band to become a very cool thing for other kids later on. I'd say that's pretty cool in and of itself. Karma has a way of making things right.
I remember during a Memorial Day Parade, it was so damned hot, and we were wearing these OLD, UGLY, HOT WOOL uniforms----green and white....before they bought the new ones that were a much lighter material---and as I'm standing at attention in a CEMETARY, no less, suddenly I looked up at the sky...and as I wiped sweat from my eyes, I noticed that the sky started to close in on itself....all black around the edges, getting smaller, and smaller, and hey!---does anybody else see this! It's an ECLIPSE!!-----and BAM!!! DOWN ON MY ASS I WENT, passed out from the heat.
I was so embarrassed...had people all around me, sitting me up, taking off my feathery hat, waving a fan in my face, giving me a glass of water, asking if I was okay...the loud microphone noise ringing of "feedback" in my ears...wiping dirt from the inside of my flute....and I had to sit there with my head between my knees the rest of the time, until we had to march back down the street to the school again. I'm not the only one who passed out, but I was the first one I think...I'll never forget that shame I felt.
BLEAH.
At our 20th class reunion, we invited my favorite band instructor, Ms. Louise Rosswaag (we called her WEEZY WASHRAG), and I had her from 5th grade all the way through 9th grade. She was (and still IS) awesome, and I love her very much. In fact, when "Mr. Holland's Opus" came out on film, I cried and felt that I should write her a thank you letter. She saw me a few months later when I visited my hometown, and hugged me for writing that letter, and said it meant the world to her.
WARM FUZZY!
We also invited Mr. Fretty and his wife. They were very surprised by our invitation, but they enjoyed our reunion very much. In fact, I tried to get my 2 "best friends," Laurie and Annette, to play the fight song with me for the two of them, (Laurie on trumpet, Annette on clarinet), as a tribute for being the coolest band teachers EVER. We rehearsed it several times, and we sounded pretty damned good after all these years...BUT...as we were getting to the point where they were going to announce it and have us actually DO IT, Laurie and Annette BOTH chickened out on me!!!
I couldn't believe it!! They were actually WORRIED that all those idiots we graduated with would STILL think of us as BAND FAGS!!! Holy crap, that pissed me off like you wouldn't believe. I said, "Fuck you both, I'm gonna get up there and play my flute for them, I don't care what ANYBODY thinks!" But, the powers that be (class President hag-from-hell), had already cancelled it from the schedule, and moved on with other things, so it was too late.
SIGH. I wish I could have played it for him. He might have been impressed that we still knew how.
Mr. Fretty was nice, kind, wishy-washy sometimes, boring sometimes, but always professional and always fair, and even though we goofed off a lot.......yeah....we goofed off A LOT......he still kept his cool.
One time, after I left my biology class, when the teacher said, "No part of this dissected frog can leave this room," DING DING DING, that sounded just like a dare to me!! Soooo, OF COURSE, I taped the frog's HEART to a piece of paper, and I wrote, "Dear Laurie, HAVE A HEART!" and I drew a big red heart around it....
I folded it up as a note, and passed it to her in band class. We were in the middle of rehearsal. She opened it while Mr. Fretty was droning on and on about something, and suddenly she SCREAMED, and tossed the paper in the air, where it fell on somebody else, who then picked it up and SCREAMED, and tossed it up in the air, and it fell on somebody ELSE....and on....and on....and wow, I got into some HUGE trouble, but lemme tell ya, I never laughed so damned hard in all my LIFE!!!!!
I'm a stinker. What can I say?! Mr. Fretty just frowned, took the paper, looked at me, wiggled his finger, like "Come here," and made me get up, put my flute down, take the paper from him, and return it to my biology teacher.....who then lambasted my ass for doing it. But, I would do it all over again.
Well, those are some memories of band that I wanted to share with you...and it has helped me feel better about Mr. Fretty's passing. Thanks for listening to my silly stories. As lame and boring as they might sound, I really wouldn't trade any of them for the world.
Bye for now. Love you lots....xoxo From one musician to another...
Love, Rebecca -- the rusty flute player......that is, I am rusty, the flute isn't.....
PS. I might just dust it off and play a tune for Mr. Fretty tomorrow.
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