Mrs. Labor and I went out to dinner last night at a local brewpub. As usual there was a phalanx of televisions with college sports beamed over us. I happened to glance at one as the panned over the band showing the band director and I remembered the following story.
Add you stories of college fun.
I attended a state university in the 1980s. It was a division II school on the great plains of no special renown unless you were an agriculture or agricultural engineering major. I studied music.
During my 4th year of school I became the pep band director for the men’s basketball games. The team was quite good that year and progressed to the finals in the NCAA tournament. The band was pretty good, with lots of spirit and we played some really fun tunes.
One of my roommates played bass trombone and somehow had obtained an anatomically correct, full-size nursing doll. I don’t recall her having a name but we dressed her in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and a hat to wear, she was then propped up in the front row of the band slumped over a bass drum. Please realize that we acquired this doll because she was completely worn out and our hauling her around caused her joints to be mostly disengaged, it took a bit of time to get her propped up with some semblance of actual human posture. We were able to get a drum mallet in her hand so she was as life-like as possible. To me, right in front of her, she didn’t look at all real but I suppose from a distance she looked like a person perpetually slumped over a drum.
During that season our mode of operation was to play as loudly as possible when the away team had the ball. We also played for about 30 minutes before the game, during time-outs, and halftime. We were not allowed to play during free-throws but we could be as loud as possible, and with the spirit of college students we completely fulfilled our rolls. When we were not playing we generally pounded on the drum and led cheers that were goofy, or ironic and loud with percussion emphasis. I remember the local paper reporting on a game referring to ‘the Frost Arena and percussion bowl.”
As the season progressed and it became more obvious that the team was good attendance at the games really increased. The band responded by playing and cheering and chanting even more, we had lots of fun and our nursing school doll remained in the front row slumped over her bass drum.
One game we were blasting away on some old rock and roll tune and the student crowd was streaming into the arena past the band. As usual the stands were filling up and groups of students would pause by the band as they waited to find places to sit. They were usually well lubricated with anti-freeze and I don’t fault them for this, winter was very harsh up there. The band was mostly sober until the game ended then we would make up for the deficit.
As the crowd would stop they would look at the band and maybe dance a step or two, they enjoyed us mostly for our spirited performance and we all had a good time. I recall once that a group of coeds that were lubricated stopped and danced around more than usual and one stopped to look at our nursing dummy slumped over the bass drum. Somehow this coed believed that the doll was a student passed out on the drum, the coed pointed this out to her friends and they all had a good laugh. The brave coed then gave the doll’s shoulder a bit of a push to awaken her from her passed-out state.
As stated above it took some time at each game to get the doll properly positioned and she was pretty worn out mostly her head, arms and legs were held on by a thin tube or the clothing we had dressed her in. When the coed gave her the poke to bring her out of her stupor the doll’s head rolled away from her shoulders and wobbled around on the head of the drum. I was watching this happen as I directed the band and was not surprised how far the head rolled. However, the coed must have been really drunk because the rolling head completely freaked her out; she screamed and jumped back quite a ways. Her friends laughed really hard at her reaction and so did I.
