| ||||||||||
Dr. Ronald P. Rogers CHIROPRACTOR Support for your body's natural healing capabilities 270-384-5554 Click here for details Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig Visit ColumbiaMagazine's Directory of Churches Addresses, times, phone numbers and more for churches in Adair County Find Great Stuff in ColumbiaMagazine's Classified Ads Antiques, Help Wanted, Autos, Real Estate, Legal Notices, More... |
Chuck Hinman: IJMA 163 - Don't Borrow Keepsakes It's Just Me Again, No. 163 : Don't Borrow Keepsakes The next earlier Chuck Hinman column: Chuck Hinman, IJMA: Kissing in my family By Chuck Hinman Don't borrow keepsakes Hardly anyone escapes the ultimate embarrassment of borrowing something "precious" from a close friend and then losing or breaking it before its return. In the early days of TV, there was a hit series "Candid Camera" with Allen Funt in which they carried out this theme. For example, a jeweler trying to explain that he dis-assembled the customer's watch and forgot how to re-assemble it as he hands the bag of watch parts to the appalled customer. Or the dry cleaning clerk apologizing for the scorch mark on the back of the bride's gown that had just been brought in for a "hasty" press job! This is our family's ultimate embarrassment.In 1935, Dad's and Mom's good friends, Roy and Pearl Rice of Blue Springs, Nebraska, encouraged our family to take (borrow) Roy's cornet to see if I enjoyed playing it well enough that buying a new cornet wouldn't be a "risky decision." What a wonderful gesture from old school friends at Blue Springs High about 1910ish, nearly a century ago. Roy had played this cornet many times in the landmark bandstand in the popular Blue Springs park. In later years, Roy was too busy raising daughter Loretta and running the family general store in Blue Springs, to spend any time with his cornet. So it just sat gathering dust until the Hinmans took (borrowed) it for me to try it to see if I was a budding Doc Severinsen. In the mid-1930s Liberty, Nebraska, was organizing a community band with a band director from Marysville, Kansas. Dad and Mom had sacrificed to buy brother Bob a shiny new French horn and he (Bob) was doing remarkably well on it. So it wasn't too much a stretch of the imagination to think that I might "take" to the cornet. Well, it didn't happen. But before we returned it, a terrible thing happened. It wasn't unusual when the horn wasn't being played for a short period to lay it in the open, velvet-lined case with the mouthpiece extended a few inches outside the case. But not every cornet player gets in a scrap with his jerk brother as often as I did. Bob knocked me backwards over the case cramming the lid down and breaking off the front four inches of the cornet! Oh my! Several months after the cornet came back from being repaired (it would never look the same with that horrible bulge) I shamefully handed Mr. Rice his horn and tried to apologize -- as best a thirteen year old boy could -- for what happened. I was mortified but as I remember, he mustered a smile, hugged me, and seemingly "blew it off." I never became a cornet player but some remember when I was a pretty decent piano-organ player. See Story 114 -- "Music in My Life." Somewhere in the Wymore, Blue Springs, Liberty, Nebraska, area there must be a kid playing an old cornet with an ugly repaired place just ahead of the mouthpiece. I know something about how that happened.... Writers note: Since this is one of my memory stories, let's "fast forward" forty some years when our son, Paul Hinman, received the coveted "Oklahoma All State Trumpeter" award. He thrilled us further when he strutted with the prestigious OU marching band playing his Bach trumpet which he still has. Incidentally, it wasn't borrowed, he paid for it mowing yards all over Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and being the church janitor at New Harmony Baptist Church. Atta way to go -- Paul! - Chuck Hinman, emailed February 18, 2009 This story was posted on 2012-04-08 04:54:56
Printable: this page is now automatically formatted for printing.
Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Chuck Hinman - Reminiscences:
Chuck Hinman, IJMA: Kissing in my family Chuck Hinman: IJMA 103 : Honeymoon Memories Chuck Hinman No. 162-B, Good night, John-boy Chuck Hinman, IJMA No. 370 : Windmills, Remember Them? Chuck Hinman. IJMA 302. A self-taught skill Chuck Hinman: IJMA No. 339 : New Hope School Chuck Hinman: IJMA No. 156, The Bruensbach School Chuck Hinman: IJMA No. 138. Coyote hunts in the olden days Chuck Hinman: IJMA 313 : Wardrobe mania Chuck Hinman: IJMA 098 : The Watkins Man story View even more articles in topic Chuck Hinman - Reminiscences |
|
||||||||
| ||||||||||
Quick Links to Popular Features
Looking for a story or picture? Try our Photo Archive or our Stories Archive for all the information that's appeared on ColumbiaMagazine.com. | ||||||||||
Contact us: Columbia Magazine and columbiamagazine.com are published by Linda Waggener and Pen Waggener, PO Box 906, Columbia, KY 42728. Please use our contact page, or send questions about technical issues with this site to webmaster@columbiamagazine.com. All logos and trademarks used on this site are property of their respective owners. All comments remain the property and responsibility of their posters, all articles and photos remain the property of their creators, and all the rest is copyright 1995-Present by Columbia Magazine. Privacy policy: use of this site requires no sharing of information. Voluntarily shared information may be published and made available to the public on this site and/or stored electronically. Anonymous submissions will be subject to additional verification. Cookies are not required to use our site. However, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser, some of our advertisers may use cookies for interest-based advertising across multiple domains. For more information about third-party advertising, visit the NAI web privacy site.
|