Pine Ridge Silver Cornet Band

AS a cammunity, we are probable prouder of our band than anything else we got here in Pine Ridge. Off and on, it has been playing here fer about the last three months, and the way fokes figger now it'll be able to carry off first honors in our state band contests next year.

Our band was first organized to help Lum out in the campaign fer presidents, but it has been such a fine thing fer our community on Sunday concerts that we have all decided to keep it permanent.

More ways than one, our band has helped fokes here to know each other a lot better. Sunday evenings have been turned into sort of a general picknic time with just about everbody in the township showing up to listen. Starting about half a hour before concert is due to commence, fokes start to drive up to the park and gather around the band stand. The childrens usual come first and their dads and mas later, and they all find a place on the grass to set and talk or run around until the band gets there.

Band tunin most always sounds like the stomikake, with the feller that plays the tuby soundin like he's got the most permanent ache, and the feller with the cornet sounding like his ache is the one that needs the quickest attention with a dose of paregoric.

But when Ezra takes the stand with that director's stick of hisn they settle down real businesslike and go to it.

 Band playing aint so good in moskito time, especial fer those fellers who have to use both their hands all the time. The trombone players, fer incidence, try to tackle "Under the Double Eagle" and the bugs both at the same time so that the thing sounds something like "Tra- SWAT- tiddy- tra- tiddy- SWAT- tiddy- tra- tiddy- SWAT- SWAT- SWAT!"

Some of the fellers try to keep the critters away by rubbing theirselves with oil of penny­royals, and hit makes the place smell on warm nights like a cross between a tin shop and a drug store. The boys in the band is a cheerful lot and are always figuring up something or some new number to serprise or amuse the fokes with. One night they not only fooled the fokes, they fooled Ezra hisself when he took up his stick to direct em they didn't play on their regular instruments at all, but on a couple of scythes, a worshboard, jugs, mouth-organs and the drummer did a bell ringing act with pop bottles. It made pretty fair music, too. and Ezra liked the serprise well enough to ask the fellers to repeat hit a couple of times at concerts since.

It don't seem to matter much whether the music is the best in the world or whether it aint. Good or bad, most fokes enjoy the band music fer one reason or the other, and hit makes everbody happy. Only time the boys got the cammunity down on them was oncet when they played "The Storm." They got playing in sech real dead ernest that when a big rain squal blew up real sudden everbody in the crowd figgered that the band had done it and concert broke up with the band running in high gear to get away from the audience.