Embedded Files
This page is a recollection of my younger years. Some, possibly most, of the stories concern outrageous happening that "somehow occurred" while I was in the vicinity. I admit to neither guilt nor innocence in many of these, but most of all I hope you enjoy these stories. Some are legends in our family, while some should possibly never be told outside of our close circle. But now that I'm over eighty years old I don't care anymore. Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Super Coach, and The Day Robert Fled the Interview...
The Eastman Annex. The gym was on either the 4th or 5th floor. We used the bridge to come across from the main school. I used to live in the house directly adjacent to the annex.
Battleship exercise trainer comes to music school. Uh...,
Pianists, violin players, and many more who had been training their hands and fingers all their lives, now found they had to climb ropes "or you'll never make the team!"
All students were required to take "physical education." Unfortunately, our PE instructor's previous job had been a trainer on an aircraft carrier. We were music students.
Below:
The main hallway of the Eastman School of Music, where all of us in the gym class were longing to be rather than where we were.
Warren O. was taken away in an ambulance to Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester campus.
Jeffrey took me to the emergency room where they admitted me. Jeffrey, concerned about me, stayed between 2 - 3 hours making sure I had doctors and was well taken care of.
I would be in this hospital for a week.
Below:
Robert returns for a check up, but not for long.
Strong Memorial Hospital, the site of the great escape. The blue arrow points to the room I was in.
The room looked very similar to this 1950s hospital room. And it had a window.
Spinal tap needle.
The new Phys Ed instructor didn't know a violin from a tuba, yet the Eastman School of Music had hired him to "keep all the music students in shape." His previous job was that of an exercise director on an aircraft carrier, and now all us students, boys and girls, were required to attend his PE classes twice a week. I arrived at the school the same year the new coach did in 1959, so nobody knew yet what was about to happen. We found out quickly: he apparently thought he was still in the military.
"All right, class, I want ten laps around the gym! Get moving!
I was in pretty good athletic shape in those years, but some of the others weren't. I was a fast softball pitcher plus a good basketball player, but not everyone else had these abilities.
"You there! Step on it! Burn off some of the belly fat! Come on, move your butt!"
Some of the kids couldn't complete ten laps, so ended up sitting on the floor exhausted after short amounts of time. Fortunately the coach (soon to be known as "Super Coach") noticed the obvious and left them alone.
"Alright now, take a 60 second rest and then we're moving on to the pushups!"
Holy cow. I could do 80 pushups in those days, but just a cursory glance should be able to tell anybody that a lot of the kids, superior musicians, probably never did a pushup in their lives. Some of the guys ended up just lying on the floor.
"O.K. It's time for the rope climb! You there (pointing at me), get up that rope and down again as fast as you can!"
I was a horn player so didn't have to worry too much about roughening my hands on hemp ropes. But the piano, cello, and other string players were now faced with using violin hands to do what this guy was barking at us. I went up and down the rope quite quickly, but Super Coach never missed a beat.
"Next! You! Do the rope!"
I looked a Samuel S., a violin player, and he had a terrified look on his face.
"C'mon, kid! Real men climb ropes! Get on with it!"
Samuel was almost crying. He said something about his hands and the number of hours he has to practice to be 1st chair in the orchestras, but the flight deck drill sergeant called him a 'lily,' or something like that. Fortunately, somehow, Samuel didn't have to climb the rope. Then came the jumping jacks, the knee bends, and finally - the trampoline.
"You there - horn player or whatever! Get on that thing! Let's see you go a little higher!"
I was scared of the trampoline. I'd be way up in the air with a small target below where I was trying to land in the middle. The springs in those days didn't have any covers over them, so if your foot or finger hit a spring you'd be in terrible pain from the pinch. (That happened to me a few times). The next kid on the trampoline landed on his back. He had no idea how to stay upright up in the air. And he was typical of most. Bassoon players, virtuoso concert violin players, all the best students in America were now subjected to flying up and down in the air for some strange reason. We stood close around the trampoline in case someone missed coming down.
This horror show went on twice a week, 50 minute drills each time. When it was over we were given ten minutes to take a shower, change back into clothes, and get across the Swan Street bridge and into our next class. Of course, trying to concentrate and learn anything following these ordeals was another problem.
Historical note:
One kid never took a shower after these grueling exercises. In the locker room he'd just change out of the gym shorts and into his school clothes, putting them right back over his sweaty arm pits and body. Then he'd sit next to the steam radiators in class totally befouling the room with stench.
This continued for three months into November when the smell coming from his dormitory room became so overwhelming that the students finally seized him after dinner and rub-a-dub-dubbed him in the bathtub for about ten minutes, clothes and all. It worked. The dormitory didn't have to leave all the windows open anymore.
Sometime after the Christmas break, I think it was in February, Warren O. broke his neck on the trampoline. He was rushed to the hospital where he underwent surgery to repair the damage. It would take him eight weeks to recover. In spite of this, Super Coach pressed on.
"You there! Up the ropes! And you, give me three laps around the gym!"
Finally, I think it was in April, I landed on my head on the trampoline and couldn't move. Although I hadn't broken my neck, I'd compressed all the disks and couldn't move my arms hardly at all, and certainly couldn't lift my head up off the canvas. The students helped me get off the trampoline and into a chair off to the side. While I was trying to figure out just how badly I was hurt, I noticed other students were still flying up into the air. Warren O. was still in the hospital, and now I was on my way to the same place. Jeffrey K., a violinist friend, offered to take me in his car.
After crossing over the Swan Street bridge, and walking with great difficulty, I asked Jeffrey to let me off on the 2nd floor so I could tell my horn teacher that I had to miss my lesson that day. I remember walking into Verne Reynolds' studio unable to turn my stiffening body in any direction. He told me to get some help quickly.
I was in the hospital for a week. The doctors told me about the compressed disks and how lucky I was that it wasn't anything worse. The remedy involved attaching small weights to my skull and having them hang over the end of the bed on pulleys. I didn't notice the weights, and I was not allowed to change position for a week. The weights were indeed enough to un-compress the disks, so the procedure was a success.
I was released from the hospital and returned to school, a week removed from my practice routines on the horn. But I had to go back to the hospital for check ups. Among the checkups was analyzing blood work to look for signs of successful healing. The tests revealed they need yet more tests, so I was instructed to come back a few days later. I did.
I went into a room on the 1st floor where a nurse told me "doctor would be in to see me shortly." I asked what was going on today, and the nurse said something about a "spinal tap." I'd never heard of a spinal tap, so just sat and pondered for a moment as the nurse left the room. Then she came back. She laid a ginormous needle on the table (pictured below) and departed again. I sat there looking at this thing. It was over a foot long.
There was no question or hesitation as to what I was going to do next. The decision came in less than two seconds:
"I'm getting the hell out of here..."
The door was out of the question: I might run into the nurse or doctor in the hallway. I remember looking at the window knowing that the grass was on the other side of it. I remember thinking that i didn't care if it would open or not because I was going through it. Fortunately it opened. The next thing I remember was running like mad across the grass. Running ten laps around the gym had maybe conditioned me for this. I never looked back.
I ran all the way through the streets of Rochester back to the music school over 3 miles away. I had pulled the great escape. The hospital room was empty and Robert was gone.
Now I was back to playing in the orchestras I loved. The soaring melodies of Beethoven, Mozart, and more were what I lived for. But I knew what was coming;
A few days later I walked back across the Swan Street bridge for my compulsory PE class again. The trampoline had been removed, but we were still doing military level training. The rope climbing had been discontinued, but Super Coach hadn't slowed down at all.
"You there! Give me fifteen pushups!"
I did.
Postscript:
Warren O. went on to recover and became a tremendous opera singer. We are close friends to this day.
About 20 years after I'd left Eastman I was visiting the school and old friends. We were in the coffee shop when I inquired after Super Coach. Charles, now an administrator himself, told me that the flight-deck coach was no longer employed at the school following "an incident." I asked what the "incident" was. He relayed it to me.
"After hearing several years of complaints about Super Coach, the administrators finally called a meeting with him. He was asked about his rigorous training he was putting the students through. Someone asked,
"Why are these exercises all so grueling, Coach? Do they have to be this severe?"
"These are not 'severe,' as you say," he replied. "What I do is necessary. Otherwise the students will end up looking like... (pause)... will end up looking like...
"Some of the people sitting here in this room."
After that he was gone.
End of Story
From the Army Truck Files:
I owned an army truck. We were adventurous lads.
The Story:
The scene of the crime:
The 406 Bar
Rochester, Michigan:
circa 1969
I quit frequenting places like this beginning on August 15, 1974. The following story comes from five years before that date.
Army Truck circa 1955. Sometimes called "Power Wagon." Strong as bull. I had one.
"A frame" made of logs. Used to pull up fence posts
Parking meters, soon to face the Pintel hook. They were innocent.
Army truck, demonstrating to Harry and the boys in front of the 406 on how to hook up to a fence post.
Pintel hook vs Parking meter
20' Logging Chain
Army truck a moment later. Notice ball of cement swinging in the breeze.
Jim Hurley arrives. He is not pleased.
The Parking Meter Debacle
My old friend, Ray Johnson, had asked me to help him pull fence posts out on his farm near Oxford. There was an aging field with approximately 60 old posts that needed to be removed. “Can we use the Army truck,” he’d asked. I was only too happy to oblige.
Ray had come up with an ingenious way to pull these things out of the ground. He’d taken two new fence posts and created an “A” frame out of them. They joined together at the top spreading out at the bottom to resemble the letter “A.” Then it had some cross-braces nailed in place to hold this gizmo solid, and now Ray was ready to show me how it worked.
We tilted it across the top of a fence post so the feet of the “A” were on the ground and the top lay diagonally over the fence post. Then we’d hook a logging chain to the post, run it up across the top of the “A” frame, and then continue it on to attach to the Pintle hitch on the back of the truck. Then we’d move the truck forward slowly and the chain would pull the “A” frame to a standing position, and pull the fence post straight up out of the ground in the process. We worked all afternoon and removed all the posts he wanted to remove. It was a success.
That evening I drove the Army truck down into Rochester. There was action in the pool hall for a few hours, and then I retired across the street with my old friend Harry Schemer (we’d grown up together) to spend the remaining hours in a joint called the “406 Bar.” The “Four-O,” as it was called, featured a pool table upon which many fortunes were both made and lost. Tonight was slow action, so we sat and talked.
I was trying to explain to Harry and others how to pull fence posts, but found it wasn’t easy. It’s hard to imagine an “A” frame if you haven’t worked with one. A few other friends joined our table as I explained,
“Yes, the chain goes over the top of the “A,” then to the bottom of the fence post, and the other end is attached to the truck…”
Blank stares and quizzical looks were all that greeted me. Finally, after several attempts to clarify all this to these guys, I gave up.
We left the Four-O about 2:30 in the morning and walked out onto Main Street. The pool hall across the street was closed, of course, and we all said “good night". But then I noticed that the Army truck was parked directly in front of us, and there was the “A” frame still in the back of it.
“Harry, here’s the ‘A’ frame right here,” I excitedly suggested, but he just stared at it lying there sticking up partially over the tail gate.
“Well, it looks like this,” I said, and ran over to pull it out of the truck. “Thump,” it landed on the ground, protruding about two feet higher than me up from the street. Harry and the gang just stood looking puzzled. I could see they still didn’t understand.
“Well, guys, you just tilt the thing back over the top of a fence post like this…”
I was holding it up at about a 45 degree angle to demonstrate the principle, and then noticed something right next to me that would help to illuminate the situation - of all things, it was a parking meter. I tilted the A-frame over the meter.
“Hey, look at this, guys! See? I just tilt it back over the parking meter like this. Can’t you see how this works? When the A-frame stands up, the post comes straight up into the air…”
They still looked confused, and that's when inspiration hit me. It was "genius," thought. It was a chance to not only demonstrate how to pull fence posts, but also the dreaded meters which were hated by all... A cloud of memories swirled through my brain...
...Main Street merchants running up and down the street putting money in the meters so customers wouldn't get ticketed...
…The time I went into City Hall and dumped a pile of nickels and pennies on the counter to pay a parking ticket...
...The countless times I'd heard "g_____m!" shouted from someone who had returned from shopping to find a ticket on their windshield...
With the A-frame now nestled comfortably in place across the top of the parking meter, I grabbed the logging chain out of the truck, threw it over the top of the A-frame, wrapped it around the bottom of the parking meter, and looped the other end through the Pintle hook on the Army truck (the same hook used to pull tanks out of holes in the ground).
“See?" I said. "When the truck goes forward, the whole thing straightens up and pulls the post. Watch this!”
I jumped into the Army truck, fired up the huge engine in it, slid the transmission into 1st gear, low range,” (with which you could drive the thing through a building), and eased off the clutch. With the truck now moving forward at about 1/8th mph and completely unstoppable, I leaned out the window to see the A-frame coming to an upright position until it finally hung at 90 degrees to the sidewalk with a huge ball of cement attached to the bottom. Then I noticed that all I could see of Harry and the other guys was their backs and the bottoms of their feet as they disappeared down the street. They were running like hell. I yelled after them…
“Do you see how it works now?”
As I was yelling I noticed a strange light flashing on my elbow, which was protruding out the window. The light was blue. I froze. It couldn't be...
There was the police car in front of me, and I recognized the figure getting out, putting on his hat, and walking towards me. When he was fully in the headlights I knew it was Jim Hurley. He walked up to my window.
“Hello, Bob.”
“Uh, hi, Jim”
“Bob, what are you doing?”
Jim Hurley was the local small town cop in those days, and was quite a character himself. He was often to be found in the pool hall with us, shooting them in and gambling hard. He would also show up at the weekly poker games out at Harry’s (now fully disappeared down the street) house, and he wasn’t afraid to lay down the cash when he thought he had a winning hand. I knew Jim very well, but this was not good. To answer his last question, I just crashed back in the seat and threw up my hands.
“Nothing, Jim. I, uh…”
Hurley left me and walked to the back of the Army truck. Without turning around, I just sat there and heard him say,
“Well, I’ll be goddammed!”
When he got back to where I was cringing, he was furious.
“You - IDIOT! What the hell is the matter with you?!!! Goddammit all, Bob, you know I’ve got to write this one up. Jesus Christ – you IDIOT!!!”
He was clearly not pleased with our bullshit, and was storming around outside my window yelling and screaming. Finally, he turned to me and yelled,
“And I’m going to start writing the ticket in sixty seconds!”
“That’s time enough, Jim!” I yelled.
I knew he was giving me sixty seconds to get the hell out of here. I backed the truck up so the parking meter was off the chain, leaped out, was at the back of the truck in a split second, then yanked the chain off the parking meter and heaved it into the truck. The A-frame, heavy as it was, went flying into the truck as well, its weight seemingly no problem at the moment. I glanced at the parking meter: it was rolling around on the sidewalk with this gross ball of cement attached at the bottom. A gaping hole of approximately 2-feet in diameter had been ripped out of the sidewalk, but it was too late for me to be concerned with that anymore. I was back in the truck in far less than sixty seconds, threw it into the “High Range” (for speed), jammed it into gear and blasted away from the scene of the crime. In the rear view mirror I could see Hurley wandering around out in the street in front of the “Four-O,” probably trying to figure out what the hell he was going to write on his report that night.
Jim left us a few years ago, but he is unforgettable. He did a few favors for me, that’s for sure. Thanks, Jim. I needed that one.
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