Back in the day of the "real" bugles (two valves only, or a valve/rotor combo!!)... And starter's pistols... and tick sheets...
Back when two-seven closed with "Danny Boy" and it brought tears to your eyes... Back in what was, for me, the "golden age" of DCI...
The early summer before my Junior year of High School, after nine months of weekends at the school an hour away that we used for practice, and marching a thousand miles across the field by the airport that was our practice field with kids from three states...
We loaded up the old school buses, with an 8-track player wired into the speakers on the "boy's bus" endlessly playing "Highway to Hell"...
Drove 10 minutes to a house in the country, lined up in the side yard, and performed our entire show as a birthday present for a man who's name I have long since forgotten. (Our fundraising efforts, including Bingo twice a week at the VFW, had included that year a raffle to "win a private drum corp show.")
We piled back onto the buses and drove for 2 hours to perform in a parade in Bellevue, Ohio... we only played two songs, and to the people lining the streets we were just another band... and then, that evening,after 90 minutes on the road, AC/DC blaring through the tinny speakers, our warmup scales behind us, spit valves emptied three times over (just to be sure!) we took the field for what was my first show...
Heart pounding, legs more than a little wobbly, we took the field to a slow, barely-audible, single-snare cadence and faced away from the stands in our opening position. I can still hear the voice over the PA in Berea OH... "Now taking the field, from Ottawa OH... General Putnam's Men!"
A polite amount of applause from the un-seen crowd for the *almost* eighty kids who formed our corps, the first to go on that evening...
The gloved hands of our drum major counting out a rapid meter... clap-clap-clap-clap "Corps atten-HUT!"... I spent that entire season facing away from the crowd while Chip gave his salute to signal our readiness, and I never did see just what it looked like...
"You may enter the field of competition."

Agonizing minutes passed while Chip mounted the podium and Nick slowly marched to the back of the field to mirror Chip's 4-count...
Wishing I had tightened up the strap that held on my hat just a little more...
clap-clap-clap-clap "one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and"
Horns snapped up,
four steps in place as we turned 180 degrees to face the stands...
and to this day, Dvorak's Carnival Overture has never sounded sweeter than it did that early summer afternoon.

1979 was a long time ago... but that memory will always be clear as crystal.

Anyone else?