Why I live for music

It's an escape . . . literally. I hate to say it if she's still among the living; but then she'd be too old to care (or even to remember) anyway: I loathed and feared my fifth grade teacher. She made my life hell -- interfered with my every attempt to impress my classmates and to get anywhere near my beloved Linda Faye. She expected me to shut up, pay attention and do classwork -- and dealt unduly harshly with my natural aversion to these mind-numbing chores.
God bless the State of Virginia's elementary school string program! One or two hours out of class every day! Within a year I was playing the violin well enough to serenade my old man at his construction worker bedtime (early, very early). Within two years I was scoring high marks at the annual Virginia scholastic music festival. By graduation, I was first chair in both my high school orchestra and the Norfolk Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Had I not had a pressing need to escape the fifth grade, I'd never have even considered music. I loved it, of course, and had been something of a neighborhood soprano celebrity until my voice changed; but I never took it seriously until it became a means of escape.
It came to my service in a similar fashion once again years later in the Republic of Korea while I was doing my part for American imperialism. I was assigned to an artillery ballistic meteorology section supporting Honest John missiles at Camp Page in Chunchon. Camp Page was a "show camp," which meant duty consisted primarily of getting ready for inspections, parades and visits of dignitaries of one kind or another. For me, that boiled down to cleaning and polishing endless bits and pieces of government property, usually in the motor pool. Obviously, this was activity that demanded escape in the worst way. I became pretty adept at it. I volunteered for a two-week tour of duty at the International Boy Scout Jamboree in Chunchon -- passing myself off easily as an old scout, something I'd never been. I managed to spend six weeks or so hand-lettering (under the beady, watchful, and bitterly resentful eyes of the First Sergeant) a battery manning chart in the quiet comfort of the day room.
But my greatest escape of all was with a fiddle and a bow. It began when I teamed up with a professional concert violinist and a pianist to work up a performance of the slow movement from Antonio Corelli's Christmas Concerto for the service club's Christmas show. That took me out of the motor pool for long periods of time.
While this was going on, I met a guy who was getting a hillbilly band -- the (wait for it) Koreabillies -- together. He had his guitar with him and was happy to teach me -- try to teach me -- how to play Wildwood Flower. When he learned that I was a violinist, he immediately started to try to recruit me for the band.
No, no, I demurred . . . my thing is Mozart, Vivaldi . . .
He insisted that it would be nothing at all for me to play, say, Orange Blossom Special.
Much to my surprise, I was able to do it well enough to get get it by your average drunk NCO.
Between that, being able to add a note or two to his wealth of Johnny Cash covers, and sitting up on a high stool and cracking wise between songs, I became an accomplished country-western music-hating country-western STAR. Indeed, we traveled to Seoul and appeared on Armed Forces TV Network. On weekends, we did NCO clubs and the occasional officers' club.
Needless to say, my appearances in the motor pool became quite rare. My appearances in the Christmas show were three: violin 2 in Corelli's Christmas Concerto, fiddle and mandolin in the Koreabillies, and impersonator of Ray Charles in "I Need Money."
My butt reverted to the ownership of a vengeful First Sergeant when the band broke up the following January (1965), but I was out of there in February -- on my way home on a USN troop transport -- still avoiding duty by arising very early each morning to tour the ship with my empty clipboard.