Having been in the employ at the Martin Band Instrument Company , a division of Leblanc, for just over a year I felt that I was now doing something more in line with what I had envisioned when I applied for a job there. Looking back now I know that I learned invaluable skills and knowledge that make me a better repair tech and horn maker, but at the time I really hated my job. I had to be to work at 7:00 AM , something I was not at all accustomed to doing. Before I became more active in the manufacturing routine and had more interesting responsibilities there were a number of times that I just said the heck with it and slept in a bit, or called in sick. When I finally started actually showing up for 40 hours a week, it was like getting a raise!
Now that I was playing horns for a part of each day I felt I was moving up in the world. A problem arose, though. Since I was rejecting every horn that I played , production at Holton slowed down because they were working to improve the horns, and it took extra time to rework the horns that I had sent back. I worked myself out of a nice little position !
Gradually the horns did improve, and it was decided that it was no longer necessary to do the double inspection . So it was back to the daily gig of manufacture for me.
Not long afterwards I was told that the Holton tester position was opening up. The man who had been the long time tester was going to be involved in design/ engineering and research development full time. I went home that night and looked up Jon Crist`s phone number and called him at home. Jon was the national vice president of sales , a horn player , and the man who had recommended to Vito Pascucci that I reinspect all the horns. Calling him at home in the evening was perhaps overdoing it a bit but I wanted to make darn certain that management knew of my interest. I tried to sound non chalant , but I`m pretty certain that I came off as a groveling, insecure boob. Perhaps offering to work for free or actually paying Leblanc for the privilige of testing horns at Holton was a bit over the top, but I was granted an interview with the Holton plant manager and the VP of brasswind manufacture. My background in manufacturing at Martin actually carried more weight than my degrees in horn, and I was offered the position. I met with the VP of brasswind to discuss salary and was offered $12,000.00 per year. I whined that I had a masters degree in horn so he upped the salary to $12,500.00. I was expecting a lot more, but as I said before, I would have paid him for the chance to sit in a testing room and play horns all day and rub elbows on occaision with the likes of Phil Farkas, Louis Stout , Ethel Merker and Barry Tuckwell.
One of the first things on my agenda was to load up a trailor and move my pitiful belongings to my new home , much like Jed and all his kin, to a small rented house in Lake Ivanhoe, just on the outskirts of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I couldn`t understand why , for the first few days, groups of young African American children would walk up and down the street in front of my house and point at me and wave , and then come back later with another group of African American children and again point at me and wave. My land lady told me that I was
the only white person in the community, that Lake Ivanhoe had years before been settled by a group of African Americans from Chicago looking to raise their families in rural Wisconsin. I was a bit of a novelty apparently to the children, and they spent a lot of time looking at me. They were really sweet kids and I enjoyed waving back at them and talking with them for the year that I lived there.
My first morning as the new Holton tester was greeted by a heavy snow storm and I just barely made it out of the hilly neighborhood and on to the main highway in my trusty Plymouth Duster. I arrived in Elkhorn with time to spare, and having slid sideways into the employee parking lot was ready to begin my first day in what I hoped would be the beginning of many years as the Holton tester.
