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chuckroA thread on Facebook reminded me of a particularly noteworthy Miss Lindsley story.
My junior year of high school, I did my Eagle Scout project. The typical project for scouts on Long Island is to plant dune grass; others usually involve labor or construction of some sort. I decided I wanted to do a project that played to my strengths, so I put on a play. Specifically, an educational musical for the three and four-year-olds in the district’s Head Start program, teaching them important things like “use your words” and “wash your hands”.
I recruited a bunch of my friends (though there were amusingly few Boy Scouts involved in the production…), I cleared everything through the district, and I borrowed a bunch of props from the high school prop closet. I didn’t have a good place to put the props between my free period (when I could retrieve them) and the end of the day (when my mom could drive them home), so Miss Lindsley agreed to let me store them in a practice room for the day.
So Miss Lindsley is having a rough day, and she’s complaining to the women’s chorus that it’s been so busy, it’s been crazy, everything has happened to her except the kitchen sink.
And with uncanny timing, in I walk, carrying a kitchen sink from the props closet that I retrieved for the hand-washing lesson in my play.
Miss Lindsley fell off her chair laughing, and told that story to students for many years afterwards.
---
When I was cast as Daddy Warbucks in Annie in 7th grade, an issue was with the fact that, being made entirely of elbows, I bounced when I walked. Miss Lindsley felt, rather correctly, that a billionaire industrialist should perhaps walk with a bit more gravitas. When my dad came to pick me up after rehearsal, she spotted us walking toward that car and called out, “Walk like that man!”
The following year, we almost gave her a heart attack twice during the production of Bye Bye Birdie, first when Mr. McAfee missed an entrance and I had to ad-lib an excuse for why the police should arrest Conrad without his direction; then later when Mama missed an entrance and I had to announce that “Oh look, she’s already on the train!”
Freshman year of high school, she recruited Matt, Rob, George and me to form a barbershop quartet. (And to quote from The Music Man, “From now on, you’ll never see one of those men without the other three.”) The composition of the quartet changed each year as people graduated, but it proved popular enough that was had some new songs at every concert, and did some private gigs at fairs and nursing homes. We even brought back an alumni octet to perform at the district superintendent’s retirement party a couple years after I graduated. The one thing we could never settle on, of course, was the group’s name: While we were officially the “Farmingdale High School Barbershop Quartet”, other names tossed out in our run included “Awesome Foursome”, “Quickchange”, “B’shop”, and my dad’s favorite, “The Four Hambones.”
When the full chorus was singing, and an issue came up that needed addressing but wasn’t worth stopping for, she’d write it as a note on the board. An issue that came up a couple of times was that I would occasionally out-power the rest of the tenor section. I would be alerted to this by seeing “Chuckamania” appear on the board.
She was so supportive and so, so proud of the folks who did NYSSMA and the small group of us to made All-State. (And the significantly larger group that made All-County.) She’d put up a congratulatory banner for the All-State kids with all of our names on it, which would stay up for the rest of the school year.
I’m having trouble remembering the story of the schtick in Joseph… when, I think during “Canaan Days” we had to hold a long note while she (conducting the pit orchestra) pulled out, opened and drank a can of soda, then remembered to cut us off at the end. There are a few pit orchestra stories that I think have fled my brain.
I feel like I should have more Tri-M stories. I don’t remember enough details of “Melody,” the mouse who appeared in the chorus room for a while. I remember her organizing masterclasses. I remember her introducing me to “Lily’s Eyes”, the greatest two-man duet ever written. I remember her getting me a copy of the SATB arrangement of “Carol of the Bells” that was sung by the FireHazards and later the Net Present Vocals. I remember her bring the chorus to sing with the Long Island Pops at the Tilles Center. And I remember so many winter concerts and renditions of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” ―Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
My junior year of high school, I did my Eagle Scout project. The typical project for scouts on Long Island is to plant dune grass; others usually involve labor or construction of some sort. I decided I wanted to do a project that played to my strengths, so I put on a play. Specifically, an educational musical for the three and four-year-olds in the district’s Head Start program, teaching them important things like “use your words” and “wash your hands”.
I recruited a bunch of my friends (though there were amusingly few Boy Scouts involved in the production…), I cleared everything through the district, and I borrowed a bunch of props from the high school prop closet. I didn’t have a good place to put the props between my free period (when I could retrieve them) and the end of the day (when my mom could drive them home), so Miss Lindsley agreed to let me store them in a practice room for the day.
So Miss Lindsley is having a rough day, and she’s complaining to the women’s chorus that it’s been so busy, it’s been crazy, everything has happened to her except the kitchen sink.
And with uncanny timing, in I walk, carrying a kitchen sink from the props closet that I retrieved for the hand-washing lesson in my play.
Miss Lindsley fell off her chair laughing, and told that story to students for many years afterwards.
---
When I was cast as Daddy Warbucks in Annie in 7th grade, an issue was with the fact that, being made entirely of elbows, I bounced when I walked. Miss Lindsley felt, rather correctly, that a billionaire industrialist should perhaps walk with a bit more gravitas. When my dad came to pick me up after rehearsal, she spotted us walking toward that car and called out, “Walk like that man!”
The following year, we almost gave her a heart attack twice during the production of Bye Bye Birdie, first when Mr. McAfee missed an entrance and I had to ad-lib an excuse for why the police should arrest Conrad without his direction; then later when Mama missed an entrance and I had to announce that “Oh look, she’s already on the train!”
Freshman year of high school, she recruited Matt, Rob, George and me to form a barbershop quartet. (And to quote from The Music Man, “From now on, you’ll never see one of those men without the other three.”) The composition of the quartet changed each year as people graduated, but it proved popular enough that was had some new songs at every concert, and did some private gigs at fairs and nursing homes. We even brought back an alumni octet to perform at the district superintendent’s retirement party a couple years after I graduated. The one thing we could never settle on, of course, was the group’s name: While we were officially the “Farmingdale High School Barbershop Quartet”, other names tossed out in our run included “Awesome Foursome”, “Quickchange”, “B’shop”, and my dad’s favorite, “The Four Hambones.”
When the full chorus was singing, and an issue came up that needed addressing but wasn’t worth stopping for, she’d write it as a note on the board. An issue that came up a couple of times was that I would occasionally out-power the rest of the tenor section. I would be alerted to this by seeing “Chuckamania” appear on the board.
She was so supportive and so, so proud of the folks who did NYSSMA and the small group of us to made All-State. (And the significantly larger group that made All-County.) She’d put up a congratulatory banner for the All-State kids with all of our names on it, which would stay up for the rest of the school year.
I’m having trouble remembering the story of the schtick in Joseph… when, I think during “Canaan Days” we had to hold a long note while she (conducting the pit orchestra) pulled out, opened and drank a can of soda, then remembered to cut us off at the end. There are a few pit orchestra stories that I think have fled my brain.
I feel like I should have more Tri-M stories. I don’t remember enough details of “Melody,” the mouse who appeared in the chorus room for a while. I remember her organizing masterclasses. I remember her introducing me to “Lily’s Eyes”, the greatest two-man duet ever written. I remember her getting me a copy of the SATB arrangement of “Carol of the Bells” that was sung by the FireHazards and later the Net Present Vocals. I remember her bring the chorus to sing with the Long Island Pops at the Tilles Center. And I remember so many winter concerts and renditions of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” ―Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
