I heard from Dale Vanderpool this morning. Dale was a salty MU2 when I showed up at my first duty station, Navy Band San Francisco.
Packing up after a trio gig at the Treasure Island officers club, I was trying to upend an elephantine Fender Rhodes piano onto a dolly. Keeping my summer whites from contact with this gritty monster required awkward bending, arm's-length reaching, the gnashing of teeth and the swearing of oaths.
Dale looked up from the trap case in which he was stowing his gear.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked.
"What does it look like?" I said. I was very smart when I was a seaman.
"It looks like you're going to break your back and ruin your uniform."
Dale put down a cymbal stand. "You're doing it wrong," he said as he crouched on the opposite side of the Rhodes. "Don't use your back."
We lifted the piano upright. "Use your shipmates," he said. "That's what they're for."
Frank Mullen's very unofficial source of poop, skinny and bitching for present and former U.S. Navy Musicians.
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