I wasn't brought up privileged. I wasn't poor but I thought we were well off. I didn't know any better till I met other kids and went to their homes. My mother and grandmother brought me up. We owned a house in Queens, NY. To me, that made us rich. We didn't have a car. Only the richer people had cars on our block. My father had a car, but that got sold when he died.

It was the same with school. I got into Band in Junior High and we had to buy our own mouthpieces, but my mother rented a tenor sax for me from a music school/store, because the school's sax was unplayable. It had rotten pads and crud all over it. It smelled up the whole house.

My mother went the extra mile for me. That's what I meant in a previous thread that I carried my sax along with all my books 20 blocks in any weather back and forth to school. It was my sax. It was rented, so it was mine. I could never leave it at school. It would have been stolen.

I'm not trying to sound like Abe Lincoln, but we had no school busses in the city. Only the kids that were bussed in for integration had busses. All our books were ancient and from other schools and out of date. Most of our books didn't have covers anymore. We never thought about it. We thought we were ahead and modern. We were kids.

The only thing that wasn't falling apart was the building. All the things inside were old and never enough to go around. We had up to 40 kids a class. Many had to stand. We thought all schools were like that.

"My Music Page"