IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND

On the rainy morning of October 6, 2010 I was up early to walk around 5a.m. and saw that my daughter, Vanessa, had left a message. I called her back and don't even remember what the original conversaton was about. I got on my rain gear and went out to walk in the rain (which I really enjoy). At approximately 5:15 I got another call from Vanessa. She said, "Daddy, I've been in a bad car accident. I'm okay, but I think my hand is broken and they are taking me in an ambulance."

That was the scariest call I have ever gotten from one of my children and could have been the worst call of my life if anyone but my daughter herself had been making the call. I finished my walk and got showered and went on to the office in Talega, where I started looking for flights to Morgantown for my wife, Vera. About 8am I got a call from Vanessa's department chairman telling me that she had rolled her Tahoe on the wet interstate highway 4 times and landed right-side-up with only a broken hand and severe abrasions of the back of her hand and badly shaken. As the morning went on I received more information.

Vanessa had been driving on a rainy road on the way to work. As she neared her exit and was about ready to go over the last little hill before the exit to WVU, she heard her phone ring and reached to answer it. By the time she looked back up she had cleared the top of the hill to see that all the traffic was stopped dead in the exiting right lane. She swerved to the left to miss the backed up cars and then was heading for the median (which in WVA is a deep ditch) and then cut her wheel back to the right to try to stay out of the ditch. The sudden turn caused the Tahoe to roll down the freeway on the driver's side first and then over 3 more times landing on all four wheels.

To survive that accident took an act of God, a lot of Irish luck and the roll bar which Tahoes have above and behind the front seats. Seeing the photo of her car in the towing garage and then seeing her car in person days later was a life changing experience. Most of the windows had been blown out, the front windshield shattered and the passenger side severely crunched down (lucky no passenger). Her door was wedged into the jam and hand to be removed with Jaws of Life before they could get her out.

I was so shocked by the event that it took about 4 hours before I really began to consider that her call at 5am could have been the last call I ever received from her, and later that evening when I was looking for a photo of her to send to friends with the pictures from the day, I realized that I could have been looking for photos of her to do her memorial service.

She is now doing much better and the hand is healing slowly but nicely. We found another Tahoe to put her back in the same kind of car that saved her life. We are now all driving very carefully and cautiously and have all pledged that ""driving" will be the only thing we do when

driving.

It only takes a second to lose one's life. No phone call is that important!!!!!

RINGING IN MY EARS

RINGING IN MY EARS

About three years ago, I began to have a constant ringing in my ears. My best description of it would be that it sounds like a quiet version of what it sounded like when the male locusts sang every 17 years in Kansas. Realizing that it only happens every 17 years, I probably only got to hear it one of the summers that I vacationed at Grandmother Edwards house in Hamilton. It seems to me that it was around the time I was 10.

I found two YouTubes which demonstrate the sound. The first gives the life cycle of the cicada (which is interesting to a former bug collector): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLiWy2nT7U&feature=fvwThe second show a demonstration of the sound when squeezing a cicada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy12sppepRQ&feature=related

One more YouTube has all you will ever want to know about cicadas: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/periodical/Index.html

The ringing in my ears caused me to think about what might have caused it. One possible reason for the ringing was lying on my back in my room as a teen listening to "In My Room" by the Beach Boys with my head between my stereo speakers as a way of not having to listen to my parents restrictions for my life at the time. A second likely etiology would be listening to protesting children while holding their heads against their mothers to examine ears and doing this over and over for more than 35 years.

It is the first reason that led me to write about the effect of music on my life and of course, since music was an early influence, it was a perfectly natural way to mood alter as a teen.

I don't know exactly when my father started playing piano or clarinet, but his college degree was a Bachelor of Science in music. My mother was singing early in her life and winning little cup trophies for her vocal achievements. To my recollection, her undergraduate degree was in teaching but with a strong emphasis in music. My father became the band director in Macksville, Kansas as his first job and subsequenly was band director in Garnett after my birth and his stint in the Navy during WW II.

So without hard evidence, I know my parents sang a lot and I know they sang to and with me. We sang a lot as we drove back and forth from Oklahoma to visit my grandmother in Kansas and we learned old classics like "Goodnight Irene" and "Over the River and Through the Woods".

When my father decided to leave high school band directing and go to The Ohio State University, I was then exposed to The Best Damn Band in the Land,

and my brother and I would march through our tiny apartment on Defiance Drive in Buckeye Village graduate housing singing "Buckeye Battle Cry" (http://www.osu.edu/download/battle_cry.mp3) and "Fight the Team"(music on the end of the next mp3) and of course it wasn't long until we knew all the words to Carmen Ohio (http://www.osu.edu/download/carmen.mp3). And finally, "Le

Regiment" leading to the dotting of Script Ohio (http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big10/Ohio_State_

_Le_Regiment_de_Sambre_et_Meuse_(short).mp3). Talk about mood altering with music - all four songs still make the hair stand up on my arms! We also learned about Michigan music and double time marching (OSU & Michigan) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtUQ1tU4BRA&feature=related) as well as learning most of the other Big Ten fight songs and of course Anchors Away.

So by the time we moved to Norman, Oklahoma I was highly versed in college fight songs and continue to love them to this day. In Norman we quickly became huge fans of "Boomer Sooner"

(http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big12/Oklahoma__Boomer_Sooner__short.mp3) and "OK Oklahoma" (http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big12/Oklahoma__OK_Oklahoma.mp3) and learned to dislike have the "Eyes of Texas" anywhere upon us

(http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big12/Texas__The_Eyes_Of_Texas_Fanfare.mp3).

I began piano lessons probably about the fourth grade, but all I can remember is watching "My Little Margie" on television while waiting for my lesson to start. In the summer before 5th grade, I began taking trombone lessons from William Robinson, who was the band director at Norman High School and a brass teacher. I guess I had some inborn talent because I was soon sitting in with the Norman Junior High Band.

I remember when I got to junior high that I was first chair ahead of Jim Harris, a really nice guy, who hooked me up with my first date ever (the sister of his girl friend). In junior high I started playing solos in the district and state music festivals and on my first solo received a 1++ for my effort. What I can remember about trombone solos most was getting up two hours early so the diarrhea from the anxiety of being judged could resolve before I had to play (first child thing!). I was lucky because I could play most music by ear and had what is called "perfect pitch" so I didn't have to practice as much as some people to get it right. One week in my sophomore year in high school, my lack of practice caused me great humiliation as I lost my "first chair" because I had not prepared. I think I learned a good lesson at that point. I continued to play trombone through 10th grade in Norman and in the band at Portales (New Mexico) high school in 11th and 12th grade. In New Mexico, my girl friend was in the band so that worked,

but in college that was not the case and in my sophomore year, I told the director that I would love to play in the concert band but I wanted to take a date to the football games. So no more band and ironically I wound up dating a cheerleader and still went to games by myself.

All that band experience left me with a love for symphonies, college fight songs, symphonic marches, The Black Watch, The Eastman Wind Ensemble, musicals like Oklahoma and South Pacific. And as I spoke of in Double Digit Birthdays, I have continued to acquire new musical tastes including bluegrass, country music, Michael McDonald, The Doobies, Chicago, The Eagles, Carpenters, steel drum music, om music, new age music, synthesizer music, Bocelli, Pavarotti, David Foster, Peter Cetera, The Canadian Tenors and endless other varieties of music like "Jock Jams", mariachi music as in "Canciones de mi Padre "(Linda Ronstadt). I can't say that I have ever learned to like metal music or much rap music and a lot of what kids listen today sound like noise to me. I love the fact that today's young adults still like the music of the 60's and 70's that they grew up listening to us listen to. And of course I love Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman and the jazz that my dad listened to.

Being an auditory person, music will always be a source of mood alteration whenever needed and I use it ever day as I walk all those days of my 67th year and the days of the rest of my rawer, greener longer life.