Time Travel: A Primer, Lesson 6, Music Man- Time Out for a Field Trip,

Please click on this blossom to better enjoy it's stripey beauty.

If You Don't Mind Me Sayin' So, this peppermint striped amaryllis sent me spinning straight back to the year 1912 in River City, Iowa. Suddenly I find myself there in the middle of the train station, a looker-on to the arrival in town of The Music Man. Is it the huge striped-candy blossom that makes me think about the barbershop quartet rehearsing in their shirtsleeves ? Perhaps it's the memory of Winthrop's heartbreaking lisp when he is forced to greet his elder sister, Marian's, piano student who's named after this belladona lily, that sent me tumbling back in time.

Shortly after I was married, an elderly neighbor giggled when she told me that the amaryllis is also called a "naked lady", because of the way that the foliage dies down before it comes into bloom. Surely Mayor Shinn's wife and her righteous cohorts in River City would have been just as shocked by that, as they were when they found that Marian Paroo allowed the town youth to check out library books by Chaucer, Raelais and BaaaaaaaaalZAC! Quick, who else knows the ladies part in "Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little" to counter against the barbershop quartet's "Good Night Ladies"?

Extra credit to all students who return from the trip with a shiny new instrument delivered by the Wells Fargo Wagon. Band rehearsal on Seventy-Six Trombones (which I indeed once played in band at the age of 10) will commence on Saturday. Until then, remember to practice the professor's "Think System".

Goodnight my Someone.