1967 Homecoming March

It’s a crisp cool early October Friday evening. We’re forming lines outside the music department at Renton High School. Walt Wilson, our band director, is making sure we’re all occupying our proper positions while the percussion section is warming up for the drill.

There’s something magical that happens when they kick into cadence. I love the echoes off the side of the buildings as we prepare to start. We’ll marcIt’s a crisp cool early October Friday evening. We’re forming lines outside the music department at Renton High School. Walt Wilson, our band director, is making sure we’re all occupying our proper positions while the percussion section is warming up for the drill.

There’s something magical that happens when they kick into cadence. I love the echoes off the side of the buildings as we prepare to start. We’ll march out of the parking lot to head down Tobin Avenue then left up Logan Avenue across the Cedar River to Memorial Stadium.

As we leave the campus most of the neighbors are out in their front yards along Tobin to cheer us on. There’s Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle George! Grandma has a big smile as she discovers me in line. I throw a quick glance and smile back in proud acknowledgement then quickly return return to our military forward gaze.

We had a huge marching band, over a hundred or so in 1967. I remember I was one of the short ones and my uniform was too big for me. Mom stitched up the big thick cuffs on the pants so I wouldn’t trip over them. I didn’t have white shoes. We got some white liquid shoe polish and plastered several layers over some old black loafers.

As we turn up Logan the cars are backed up bumper to bumper for several blocks. It’s a total Charles Ive’s moment as the cadence crossfades with honking horns and cars packed with kids cheering and yelling, “Go Indians!”

In the late Spring of that year I came down with mono, the kissing disease, and missed a lot of school. I dropped out that next Fall mainly because I’d have to repeat my Junior year and wouldn’t graduate until 1969. I think I was too embarrassed to do that and since I was playing in bands I decided to blaze a trail through rock and roll history. I never made it as ‘they’ say, but I did have some amazing times. In 1968/69 I did go a quarter or two to Seattle Community College to get my GED. I carpooled with our neighborhood family friend Don Hensley who was attending cooking school. It was an early start and because of that I did enjoy riding in his new 1968 Mustang.

I didn’t have my shit together at all here. I couldn’t focus and felt like a loser. Mom moved out and was going steady with Steve Ray. Dad was busy, drunk, and running wild. Terry was in the service, and Steve and I were kinda homeless on and off for a couple of years.

I was adopting a rather Bohemian philosophical take on life and reading a lot of Henry Miller, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and the Russians, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn. I was also really into fantasy and science fiction so Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and of course, JRR Tolkien were all must reads.

I dropped out of Seattle Community College and because I knew Pat Thompson via our local Renton Auburn 360 Musicians Union I ended up at Green River Community College as a music major in the fall of 1969. h out of the parking lot to head down Tobin Avenue then left up Logan Avenue across the Cedar River to Memorial Stadium.

As we leave the campus most of the neighbors are out in their front yards along Tobin to cheer us on. There’s Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle George! Grandma has a big smile as she discovers me in line. I throw a quick glance and smile back in proud acknowledgement then quickly return return to our military forward gaze.

We had a huge marching band, over a hundred or so in 1967. I remember I was one of the short ones and my uniform was too big for me. Mom stitched up the big thick cuffs on the pants so I wouldn’t trip over them. I didn’t have white shoes. We got some white liquid shoe polish and plastered several layers over some old black loafers.

As we turn up Logan the cars are backed up bumper to bumper for several blocks. It’s a total Charles Ive’s moment as the cadence crossfades with honking horns and cars packed with kids cheering and yelling,“Go Indians!”

In the late Spring of that year I came down with mono, the kissing disease, and missed a lot of school. I dropped out that next Fall mainly because I’d have to repeat my Junior year and wouldn’t graduate until 1969. I think I was too embarrassed to do that and since I was playing in bands I decided to blaze a trail through rock and roll history. I never made it as ‘they’ say, but I did have some amazing times. In 1968/69 I did go a quarter or two to Seattle Community College to get my GED. I carpooled with our neighborhood family friend Don Hensley who was attending cooking school. It was an early start and because of that I did enjoy riding in his new 1968 Mustang.

I didn’t have my shit together at all here. I couldn’t focus and felt like a loser. Mom moved out and was going steady with Steve Ray. Dad was busy, drunk, and or running wild, and Steve and I were kinda homeless on and off for a couple of years.

I was adopting a rather Bohemian philosophical take on life and reading a lot of Henry Miller, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and the Russians, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn. I was also really into fantasy and science fiction so Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and of course, JRR Tolkien were all must reads.

I dropped out of Seattle Community College and because I knew Pat Thompson via our local Renton Auburn 360 Musicians Union I ended up at Green River Community College as a music major in the fall of 1969. The 2nd picture is drumer?, Me, and Rich Anarde. The 1st picture is our house.