In high school I was in the marching band. Now we weren’t just any ole band, we were a competition band. Our director was thought to be a tyrant but in reality, he just liked to win. And he instilled that in us as well.
Well Christmas was coming up and he mentioned that it would be nice if we could have a tree in the band room. So me and a friend volunteered to get one and bring it in.
So on Saturday we were off to the woods to find one appropriate for our band room.
After a searching through the woods we finally found one. It was perfect. Just the right height and shape. We then got one of our buddies to bring his truck and then we proceeded to cut it down and get it loaded. All within a few minutes.
Then we drove to the school and we were met by yet another buddy that had gone by the band directors house to get the key to the school. we did have a bit of a wait because we had to locate some wood so we could make an effective tree stand. That was the one piece we had forgotten.
Don’t stop reading because the story gets better.
After negotiating some doors we finally got the tree inside the band room and we got the stand mounted to the tree.
We stood the tree up and you would have thought we had measured it perfectly. The top of the tree missed the ceiling by about 6 inches. Very cool.
We left and waited for Monday morning so the whole band and our director could see.
Monday finally arrived and the hallway was crammed with almost all of the band members.
The director arrived and opened the door and he started laughing.
You see, our band room was a part of the gym. It had high ceiling and I mean high ceilings.
The tree must have been twenty feet tall and the width at the base almost made it impossible for the director to get in his office. It was incredible.
The next day everyone started bringing in decorations. I think, but if I am not mistaken, someone had to climb up the tree to put the star on top. I cannot confirm that.
Where did we get such a great looking tree? Well, we climbed up in another tree and saw it from a distance. Then we had to climb up in that tree to cut the top out. It was a huge ordeal at the time because we did not want it to fall and break branches.
The we had to load it on a flatbed truck. It took six of us to keep it on he truck.
When we got to school it would not fit through the double door because of a middle vertical door frame so we had to get tools to remove that. In fact we had to do that on two other doors.
It took all six of us to get the tree through all of the doors only to see that we had one final band room door to push it through.
We eventually got in but it was a struggle.
Of course we probably could have finished quicker had we not been laughing so hard. There were pine needles every where. We were luckily the tree still had them by the time we had the tree standing.
It was an awesome weekend and great Monday!
