Louisa didn’t need her French horn at school yesterday since it was the first day, but she did bring home a calendar of band performance dates for the year. The band only wears the marching uniforms twice, in the Defeat Days parade, and at the Memorial Day program in May.
Band is an every day class this year, unlike in middle school, and Louisa had to lug her horn on the bus this morning. As I watched her leave the house, I was reminded of a story about Louis Dinndorf, one of the members of my great-grandfather’s St. Cloud Municipal Band Boys’ Band.
My dad, William, played in the St. Cloud Municipal Band with Louis before Louis’ health required him to retire from the band in 2006. Dad remembers Louis telling him that he joined the band when he was only 8 years old. As Louis told the story, when he asked G. Oliver Riggs if he could join (most boys were between the ages of 10 and 18), G. Oliver responded that if he could carry his horn, he could play in the band.
What my dad and I didn't know until last week was that there was another part to that story. A friend of Louis’ and a longtime band supporter, Dick Egerman, told us over lunch in St. Cloud that the reason little 8-year-old Louis was able to transport his tenor sax to band practice by himself was because he pulled it in a wagon.
“In the winter, he put it on a sled,” Dick explained.
This, to me, gives a whole new meaning to the word bandwagon, which according to this site was coined in the mid-19th century as the name for a wagon that carried a circus band.
Incidentally, the 1953 movie The Band Wagon, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, features a song called “I Love Louisa.” Loosely adapted from a 1931 Broadway musical, the movie originally was going to be called I Love Louisa. Our Louisa used to hate it when we played the song for her. She somewhat tolerates it now, but I wouldn't go as far to suggest that she's jumped on the “I Love Louisa” band wagon.
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