Memories of Enterprise: The marching band gets younger every year

By Ricky Adams
Ledger Correspondent
Published: July 27, 2008

“Dog, they sound goood this morning!?”
Those words, spoken by grandson Lane Marler, 10, on July 21 came as we tuned into various elements of Enterprise High School’s Big Blue Marching Band in the early stages of preparation for the upcoming football season and other engagements lying ahead.
From our vantage point, current band members appear much younger than we were in the 1960s.
It was an era when EHS housed grades 9-12 and a handful of lucky eighth-graders – and, early on, a few musicians younger than that, got to learn new halftime shows every week under the tutelage of Bob McMillan, who died much too soon at age 42 in 1976.
Personally, the day won’t come when it’s proper to call our legendary band director anything but Mr. McMillan, just as none of Coach Paul Bryant’s former football players, especially those at Alabama, would ever call him by his nickname.
Both Mr. McMillan and Coach Bryant would’ve rolled over in their graves - to a strong Dixieland march cadence - had they seen the band doing what we noted the other morning:
They were practicing in the SHADE!
They had DRINKS!
They were TOPLESS!
Well…..
MOST were in the shade.
MANY had drinks.
SOME were topless.
We should’ve seen it coming. We knew fall is approaching days before we saw the band practicing; several discount stores had Christmas decorations on sale by July 15.
Furthermore, those breezes we’ve enjoyed since school let out disappeared almost entirely by the time Big Blue began rehearsing.
Had it not been for the March 1, 2007 tornado that destroyed EHS, today’s musicians would’ve joined those of us who preceded them, since 1956 practicing on the EHS campus field that served the school’s baseball, softball, physical education and band needs slightly more than 50 football seasons, and welcomed the ROTC drill team for slightly under 40 school terms.
Instead, this band roaches up in every nook and three crannies on the Enterprise-Ozark Community College campus, grounds serving as its headquarters for rehearsing for the next 20-something games while new facilities are being readied.
OK, Mr. McMillan did allow us to practice in the shade…whenever clouds hid the sun, at night and on rainy days when he permitted us to march in place under the portico fronting the auditorium and original bandroom…to keep us from having our instruments ruined, especially those belonging to EHS.
In Summer 1962, you might’ve read here previously, one girl brought a quart jar of ice water to early-morning practice and had just placed it gently to her lips to slug down a gulp when, suddenly and without warning, the dreaded right hand of Susan Harrison slapped girl and jar perxactly where they met.
“If you didn’t bring enough for all of us, you ain’t drinking if we ain’t drinking!” Susan explained.
After 1965, Mr. McMillan eliminated the senseless “no water” regulation and allowed each of us one swig daily from the only hydrant in sight to keep our lips from being welded to mouthpieces. Several years later, coaches replaced salt pills with Gatorade.
As for the topless musicians, their predecessors - Jimmy Walker, Perry Vickers, Bruiser Pilcher Burns Whittaker, et al never went topless when they banged EHS drums.
But as Mama Cass once sang, “you got to make your own kind of music.”