The Phantom Bugler
And How She Came To Be [Origin Story]
TW: Death. No really, that’s. Sort of the whole point of this. Sorry.
So. In the last story, I mentioned my father was the local high school band director.
And that gave me many opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Well, one of those opportunities was damn near unlimited access to musical stuff.
I played trumpet.
I didn’t want to.
It wasn’t my first choice. Or my second.
It wasn’t even my first instrument.
That came when I was 5 years old, and my dad came to me and told me I was starting violin lessons. I didn’t have a say in this, it was just how being the band director’s kid went.
My first violin teacher was a bitch.
I didn’t realize that until later.
Someday you will hear about her. Probably in the story I tell about the three students in my class who died.
Anyway, you know the drill, different story, focus on this one.
And in this story, I was in 3rd grade choosing my “band instrument”.
I wanted to play the drums. I was told immediately by my father, pick again.
(His reasoning, as explained later, was “Percussionists are assholes”, which is kind of unfortunate seeing as how probably the most famous musician ever to come from my town was a percussionist. I actually took trumpet lessons from his dad.)
My next choice was the saxophone. However my tiny 3rd-grade arms weren’t strong enough to hold the instrument, and I DROPPED IT.
They then handed me a flute.
Which… well…
Rewind two years. At day care. When the older kids would sit in the playrooms and practice their flutes, I would watch them, focusing on fingers and mouth positions, trying to learn them.
They handed me a flute.
I immediately had my hands in the proper position and was PLAYING.
They were ASTONISHED.
I was told I would be playing flute.
I REFUSED.
Flute, in my mind, was for girls.
And at this point, I was already well into action figure phase. I wanted action! Adventure! I wanted to be a BADASS!
They sighed.
And I was told to pick again.
I looked at the instruments and my precise response was “That one with three buttons. How hard could it be?”
It was the trumpet.
And they handed me a mouthpiece… which I couldn’t make a single sound from.
They AGAIN told me to play flute, but I was determined.
Luckily, by the time I got back to the car, I had figured it out, and within a year, I was the best trumpet player in my elementary school.
Which is saying a LOT because it was a private school known for its music program. It was attached to the local university and by 5th grade the music professor was having me attend his college courses.
(I quit very quickly. The college kids really REALLY hated having an 11-year-old in their music classes who had no problem keeping up.)
Anyway, I get to junior high, which was grades 7-9. And I’m the best player THERE too… something which was annoying to everyone else because, well, now I’m in the public school system.
And my dad is the HIGH school band director.
Everyone thought if they could try hard enough, I would magically reveal I sucked at playing and they could laugh at me.
Unfortunately for them, I did not suck.
And by 8th grade, I’m getting solo after solo, and people kind of won’t shut up about me.
(Note, this is not bragging so much as it is leading up to what comes next. Stay with me.)
So.
I’m 13 years old.
And I’m the young, up-and-coming trumpet player everyone is talking about.
Cue a phone call coming to the house one day at dinner time.
Turns out, the local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) needs a secondary bugler to play taps at military funerals.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The phone call, as it was revealed MUCH later, wasn’t from the VFW.
It was from the school superintendent who had had to find out just how much legal trouble the district would get into if it came out that they were breaking STATE LABOR LAWS by hiring an 8th grader as part of their student-work program with the VFW.
But I didn’t know that then.
All I knew was my dad hanging up the phone and telling me of an opportunity.
I would be able to get out of school sessions to play taps at military funerals on the days when the primary bugler was unavailable.
Now, I’m 13. And the chance to skip ANY school?
SIGN ME UP!!!
But.
They couldn’t have me start until that summer.
Once I turned 14.
I was cool with that. It meant that I would still get to skip classes in 9th grade!
So, there I am, that summer, at my house as a wonderful woman in a sedan pulls into the driveway to pick me up for my first gig.
Her name was Edith.
And she was amazing.
The way she exuded “BADASS” was everything my teenage self wanted to be.
So, without hesitation, I got in the car, dressed in black, with my far-too-expensive-for-a-14-year-old trumpet.
(You might notice a theme with this, considering the previous story. It was a thing.)
And as she’s driving, I asked her.
“They aren’t gonna, you know, hate me. Right?”
She smiled, her eyes not leaving the road, as she said, “If they do, I’ll get them in line quick.”
So, we drive through town. Out of town. WAY out of town.
And when we eventually got to the cemetery about 30 minutes later, she pulled in and parked. And as I got out of the car, the first thing I heard from one of the grizzled vets was:
“YOU BROUGHT US A GIRL!?!??!”
And sure enough, not missing a beat, Edith barked back, “YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN!?”
He shut up fast.
She was the honor guard captain. He knew that was a question he shouldn’t answer.
Now, I don’t remember much about that first funeral, just that I was told that the thing about a Taps bugler is that you don’t see them. Not for the ‘local’ funerals. They’re sort of supposed to be a ‘ghost’. And that the trick is that, for regular Taps, you face the tent.
But when you play the “Echo Taps” you turn around and face the opposite direction.
And then they asked me if I knew how to play it.
As it turned out, I had been playing Taps for the junior high Veterans Day assembly for years at that point. I not only knew how to play it, but I knew the trick of how, if you use a different fingering combo, you could make it a bit easier on yourself.
So I sort of scouted out my place and found a good spot to hide among the trees that lined the cemetery, where absolutely nobody would see me.
And they didn’t.
Rarely ever, that day, and every funeral going forward.
In fact, the combination of my small size, dark clothing, and innate ability to blend in led to me becoming known as “The Phantom Bugler”. Because, for better or worse, once I found my spot, nobody was going to find ME.
And yes.
Sometimes the “For Worse” did come into play.
However, that was yet to come.
It was just my first day on the job.
And when the gun-salute went off to signify it was my time, I played.
Something to know.
I was a damn good player.
But it wasn’t because of technical aspects.
I had the best teachers and equipment money could buy, and had god-tier ear-to-hand abilities. In fact, I had this weird version of perfect pitch where I couldn’t verbally name any note by sound alone, but if you played any note or combo, I could instantly replicate it, without effort, on my trumpet, as if my fingers and mouth knew the name of the notes but my brain didn’t. And THEN, after playing it, I could name the notes. Also, I could instantly tell if something was even the tiniest bit out of tune, but couldn’t tell you if it was a fraction high or a fraction low.
My original music teacher in 3rd grade likened it to Relative Pitch, but said, “It’s not supposed to work that way…”
All that said, however, I couldn’t sightread music for shit, and my fingering and tonging weren’t the best.
So, the teachers learned to compensate.
If I couldn’t be the fastest player?
I would be the best SOUNDING player.
And we pumped session after session into perfecting my tone into the most golden honey brass you could ever imagine.
And, as it turned out, that’s EXACTLY what is needed for a bugler.
There are no fingerings. Next to no tonguing.
You play the tones and make them sound like liquid silver and tears floating on the wind.
And that day, I closed my eyes, focused everything on my tone, and made magic.
Then, I waited.
Military funerals end shortly after Taps is played, and from my hiding spot, I waited till the crowd dispersed before coming out.
When I returned to the tent, the veterans were waiting for me.
And the first one who approached me was the one who complained when I got out of the car.
“Hey kid,” he says, his voice quiet but deep.
“Yeah?” I say, more than a little scared.
He smiled at me and gave an appreciative nod.
“You can stay.”
And with that, he went to put his equipment away.
I was… astonished.
My first funeral and I was already ACCEPTED.
And, as I went to put my trumpet carefully back in its case, Edith walked up to me… and handed me a 10-dollar bill.
“Here you go,” she said
I was confused.
“Wait,” I said, “This… this is a paying job???”
“Well, yes, unless you don’t want paid.”
I shook my head frantically and quietly took the bill, putting it in the storage section of my case.
And, closing it up, I loaded it in Edith’s car, and we got ready to leave.
It’s during the drive home that Edith told me.
That was the most beautiful playing she’d heard in a long time.
And she hoped I would stick around for as long as I could.
Again. I’m a kid.
And I was just handed 10 dollars for what amounted to 2 minutes of work that I got out of school for.
I’m STOKED.
And, sure enough, I would go on to hold that job until I left for college at the age of 18.
In retrospect, there was so much wrong with the situation.
Not only was it illegal to hire a 14-year-old under the table to play military funerals, let alone take them out of school to do so, but I was FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.
Playing funerals.
In CEMETARIES.
Where, as it turned out, by my senior year, there were multiple graves of my CLASSMATES.
It… didn’t lead to the best mental health situations.
But we didn’t know that then.
The effects of the job didn’t come to light until far into adulthood, and we are still trying to unpack the damage that sort of perpetual exposure to death at a young age caused in my tiny, yet-forming psyche.
All I knew was that I had a new job that I was good at, and a group of tough-as-nails WW2 vets who thought I was SO DAMN COOL.
It might have warped my brain.
But then so much in my life has.
And while there are many things in my life that I wish hadn’t happened, that wasn’t one of them.
I’m proud of how I played taps for all those veterans.
I’m proud of how I played the local war memorial into existence.
And I’m proud of how, when a local state senator passed away, I was the one to “lay him to rest”.
But, as it goes.