# 18 - Pride Cometh Before the Fall

Mr. Hess was a favorite in a long line of Band Teachers at Himni High School. We never kept one longer than a year. We always said it was because the School Board wouldn't pay them what they were worth, but looking back, I wonder if there weren't other reasons. Mr. Hess arrived in time to begin a Summer Band program. I signed up. It was probably the best band experience I had in all my years in Himni. Mr. Hess was amazing. He was competent, if not masterful at every instrument in the band. He could out play every one of us, on our own instruments. He was magnificent on the trumpet and we even thought he looked a lot like Al Hirt, a rotund trumpet player we often saw and heard on TV. Al Hirt was big, Mr. Hess was huge! I would guess him to be close to 400 pounds. He was completely unencumbered by his weight. In fact he prided himself in being able to do anything a thin man could do.

One day during Summer Band, we rented the local pool for a party. Mr. Hess spent most of the afternoon on the diving boards. He could empty the pool with his cannonball! He even did a swan dive off the 3 meter board. He stood back by the rails, took a deep breath and, quite gracefully, hopped to the end of the board where he took a remarkable preparatory leap. When he landed on the end of the board it sank so low I couldn't imagine it could withstand the strain. The tip of the board seemed more vertical than horizontal. As it reached the bottom of its valiant bend, the board seemed to just quiver there for the longest time before it finally sprang, launching that giant man into the most wonderful arching swan dive I think I've ever seen! He entered the water, completely vertical. His back was arched, near as we could tell. His legs were straight, knees together, toes pointed. It was a beautiful thing to behold! But when the water colapsed back into the crater he'd created the concussion nearly broke every eardrum in the place. He surfaced to a standing ovation.

We all loved Mr. Hess and occasionally, we thought he loved us too. Mostly, though, he was all business. He really hoped he could make something of our band. He was a strict disciplinarian and everyone knew he meant business, especially after the Rob Hanke incident. Rob, you'll recall, played the Sousaphone and sat on the back row. You'll also recall, that Rob often needed to catch up on lost sleep. This was the case on a warm Spring day in Mr. Hess' class. Rob was half hidden by the bell on the Sousaphone and half hidden by his music stand. Mr. Hess noticed that he wasn't making any music and suspected he was napping. All he could see between the instrument and the stand was Rob's forehead. No one noticed him slip over to the chalkboard and pick up one of those footlong, half foam, half leather erasers. He placed it on his music stand and began to conduct a march by John Philip Sousa. Rob had a pretty strong part in Stars and Stripes Forever and when he missed his cue Mr. Hess let the eraser fly. It went end over end and slipped through that three inch window as slick as you please where it nailed Rob right in the center of his forehead. He and the Sousaphone went over backwards with a crash. When we started to snicker, one glance from the man who could squash us like bugs, straigtened our faces and silenced our titters. Rob seldom missed another cue.

One day in late May the power went out. There were plenty of windows so we carried on without interruption in the band room. When the lights came back on, someone in the office came on the intercom and asked us to reset the clock. The band room was terraced, making the wall behind the conductor's stand at least 12 feet tall. The clock was situated high on that wall. He could have asked any one of us to climb on a stool and set the clock, but his pride got the best of him and he determined to do it himself. He placed a tall stool beneath the clock. Next to the stool he placed a chair. Stepping onto the chair and then the stool, he agilely got into position. The intercom announced the current time. Mr. Hess reached up to set the clock. Even on the stool it was quite a stretch. Stretching has a tendancy to redistribute the body. The folds that normally, applied pressure to his belt, somehow vanished and his belt, pants and all, dropped abruptly to the floor. Tapered pants were in vogue in the mid-sixties, making cuffs barely big enough to slip a pointed foot through. With his shoes on there was no way he was just going to step out of them. And so there he stood facing the wall, on top of a three foot stool over which his voluminous pants were inverted. There he stood trapped, in front of a classroom of 45 gaping mouths. There he stood with three yards of white cotton fabric printed with little red hearts fashioned into one gigantic pair of boxer shorts. (My first exposure to boxer shorts - and was I ever exposed!)

There was dead silence in the room, no one dared breathe. Finally, after about forever, Mr. Hess hissed, "Warner! Hand me my pants!" Mitch hurried to his aid. The band teacher pulled up his britches, sprang from the stool to the chair and from the chair to the door and disappeared.

There were three days left in the school year. We never saw Mr. Hess again.