Mid day Monday and a jazz band rehearsal. The baritone sax in the saxophone section, with the trombones and other ensemble functions puts a nice burly root to the whole. But on this rapidly heating day I was deracinated; I had forgotten one of the small vitamin bottles I use to soak reeds and was barely making phrases, let alone a musical blend. The reed for this instrument, of whatever strength, is a good sized one and expands the misery, and misery it is when one is aspiring to an art, of not having it vibrate correctly.

I had enough and went out to my car between numbers to see if the messy trunk could cough up any other of my "fleet" of bottles. Just out the door, and being reminded of a major reason for my troubles by the approaching triple digits rash inflicted by the unfettered sun, I spotted one of those two-inch locusts it seemed I encountered a lot more decades ago. Not an endangered species, as many beleaguered farmers will testify. Ah, the little boy; I had to catch it for a moment and was aided by its entrapment in a tall spot of grass possibly abetted by cutbacks in the community college gardening budget. Some people will call this a grasshopper, but the grass wasn't conducive to hopping. I cupped it in hand and got a nice spot of "tobacco juice" on my thumb. Reed players often tell stories of "substances" which aid the cane, and I wondered. No, most of this is highly speculative and in this case gross!

I set the locust on its next good burst of airborne activity and did find a bottle in a bag of music ("Hello, my name is Dan..."). I got a better reed going and my end of rehearsal won going away.

A plague on instrument problems.