Volume 30 · Number 3 · Spring 2013
The plane that smiled
The first time the men’s basketball team went to the NCAA playoffs, the Cal Aggie Marching Band made history of its own — and the skies a little friendlier.
It was March Madness 1967. The Aggies were going to the NCAA Division II playoffs.
The unexpected stars at that roaring and spirited weekend were not the competing teams, but the over-the-top, foaming-at-the-mouth “group” that accompanied the Aggie basketball team to San Diego — the furiously marching, thunderously yelling, magnificently playing Cal Aggie Mavrik Band.
It would be another six years before women were allowed in the band, so the “concoction” the band unleashed on this unsuspecting crowd was potent stuff indeed. And this time out of its cage, the band had in tow its faculty director, Art Woodbury. “Uncle Artie” had surprised us earlier in the season with a blazing, gloriously wailing sax solo during a band performance of the Batman TV show theme song. When we learned that we were going to San Diego, we agreed: “We gotta take Art with us.”
And so we embarked on the band’s first-ever airplane trip. The airline was PSA (Pacific Southwest Airlines), with its famous smiles painted on the “chin” of its planes. Little did the passengers or crew realize what kind of smiling service they were going to get that day.
On route to San Diego, we made a stop at the Los Angeles airport to let off some passengers and take on some new ones. There were no jetways then, at least for the PSA planes anyway, so the boarding passengers walked across the tarmac and made their way up a stairway, little suspecting what was going on inside the plane.
And what was going on inside the plane?
As the first boarding passenger — a man in this case — entered the plane’s cabin and turned down the aisle, a typical “nut” in the band, with a daffy smile on his face, loudly exclaimed as he pointed at the man.
“Hey! There he is!”
The rest of the band, always quick on the draw for this kind of stuff, immediately broke out into loud exuberant cheering, like this guy was their most beloved movie star. The guy was floored. We whistled, cheered and laughed as the passenger smiled in total disbelief. Obviously he would never be the same again. Every passenger that boarded the plane got the same “treatment” except, with each new “arrival,” the band “nut” exclaimed more excitedly, and the band’s whistling and cheering became more atomic, with thunderous applause thrown in for good measure.
The change in the facial expression on these entering passengers’ faces was indescribable . . . and thoroughly intoxicating.
Then . . . the large grumpy-looking lady got on the plane. She was absolutely not going to let this band of whippersnappers crack up her fierce stony glare . . . not on your life, buddy. As I watched her walk down the aisle, I was in total wonder at this human being who could actually resist the magical wiles of the Aggie Band. It was amazing! But as she walked past my aisle seat, she lost it. It was one of the most satisfying moments of my life. That face-splitting smile of hers was priceless, and a real testimony to the effect the Aggie Band had on people wherever it went.
Pages more could be added to this story about that trip. There was the band’s typical, raucous, exuberant, electric marching entrance that first night into San Diego State University’s huge gym, which blew everyone away. They had never seen or heard the likes of it before.
The following night, the gymnasium erupted in cheering and applause at the sound of the band’s thundering drums — as the band was still coming through the building’s outer doors.
And then there was that deliciously wonderful, electric sax solo by Art, during our halftime show. The crowd went nuts.
One can only wonder how the Aggie Band has affected and changed lives over the years, in ways that most of us will never know . . . and, in changing those lives, changed the world, one person at a time . . . one gymnasium at a time. I can only testify to its effect on my life. I joined fall of my freshman year, and was the band’s sole glockenspiel player (until a lovely young lady took over that job) and later served as its “movie camera and sound man.” No other life experience of mine could ever touch my “trip” from the late ’60s to the early ’80s with the band. The memories simply make me smile.
Editors note: In the playoffs, the basketball team lost 100–83 to Nevada Southern (now University of Nevada, Las Vegas) in the first round, then beat Portland State, 81–61, in a consolation game.
Steve Shuman
Steven Shuman ’69, a native Californian, has lived in New England since 1996. He is retired and lives a quiet, simple life — for now. He keeps his hand in writing, artwork and musical projects. He is working on an illustrated book or two that he hopes to self-publish. How does he like living in New England after spending the first 50 years of his life in California? “Just fine,” he says, “because Boston is just an hour away.”