23 Hobbies
My own children grew up in a world with screens everywhere, and it’s hard for them to understand a place without the TV or internet. What would we have done all day?
There was plenty to do, between school and church activities, a big woods nearby that needed exploring, and any number of hobbies. Surrounded by the natural world, we collected rocks for polishing, and I remember keeping small potted plants – a tiny cactus. Gary had an Erector Set and I had Tinker Toys. Like all girls her age, Connie had her Barbies.
Stamp collecting came naturally in a preacher’s family that occasionally received letters from missionaries in other countries. Paper letters were natural and abundant in those days, and so was were the stamps affixed to them. Competition was natural for two boys so close in age, and my brother generally avoided direct matches with me, so I think he wasn’t particularly serious about his stamp collection, and appeared unconcerned that mine seemed to be always bigger and better.
Then one day, out of nowhere, a package arrived for him containing a treasure of philatelic supplies: genuine stamps from around the world, a book describing how to excel at the hobby, and a magnifying glass. He was elated! Somewhat enviously, I agreed to look more closely at his new haul, when I noticed the fine print on the cover letter, explaining that this package was being sent on a trial basis by generous people who just knew that he would want to purchase it, but that in the very unlikely chance that it didn’t meet all his desires, he was welcome to return it without charge.
Naturally he was devastated. Now I know that such unsolicited mailings are illegal and that he would have been entirely within his rights to keep the whole package, but at the time it was nothing but a letdown and his interest in stamp-collecting disappeared.
That’s okay, because we had plenty of other ways to keep busy. We played with model rocketry and model airplanes, loved by my brother, who was always more of a builder than I was. And of course there was music.
23.1 Music
We didn’t think of ourselves as an especially musical family, though by most standards today I guess we were.
My mother had a good singing voice, but had never learned to read music or play an instrument, so most of the musical activity in our family came from our father, whose grandmother had taught him. We had a piano in our home, I think as a gift from Dad’s family, and he would often in a moment of boredom play a few pieces from memory, like the hymn “When I think of the goodness of Jesus”. He whistled too, and it was not unusual to hear him humming a song or two. I think he secretly wished our family was much more more musical. He sometimes referred enviously to families that would sing together on long car rides (though sadly, to even mention this out loud to my siblings would have brought groans), and we owned a stereo phonograph, a luxury in those days when we had little money.
From an early age, then, all three of us kids were expected to learn music.
Any potential talent on my part was apparently not visible when I was in kindergarten. My teacher was disappointed in my singing voice enough that she singled me out among my classmates for special training by a special education teacher. Once a week I was led away from the class to meetings with a woman who gave me singing exercises. At the time I thought it was silly and pointless: she asked me to tap along with a time signature for example, or sing simple “do-ray-mi” scales. I must have done okay, though, because I was rewarded after each session with a piece of candy which, ironically, I didn’t like and promptly passed along to a classmate.
My brother and I began piano lessons early, at first taught by Dad, but soon taught by an elderly lady down the street. She gave each of us a practice card in which we were expected to record the number of minutes each day that we practiced. If the totals were not at least 20 minutes per day, we knew we’d suffer from her stern looks and reprimand at our next lesson.
I don’t remember being especially diligent one way or another, but I do remember being surprised at my brother’s struggles. Concepts that seemed easy or obvious to me seemed to take him extra time to master. Since until then I had always assumed that my brother, being older, was naturally better than me at everything, this was the first time it occurred to me that maybe I could outcompete him at something.
In third or fourth grade, our elementary school began to introduce interested students to instruments and my brother and I were encouraged to think of which we’d like to play. He chose the alto saxophone, for a reason I no longer remember, and soon our house was full of the struggling sounds of a beginning saxophone player. He seemed to enjoy it, and I couldn’t wait my turn to learn an instrument as well.
Somehow I was intrigued by the fife and drum photos I saw in paintings of the American Revolution: I chose drums.
Our music teacher, Mr. Rasmussen, explained that the percussion section was the most difficult in the orchestra and that only those students who performed highest on the music test would be admitted. My friend Todd Makie made the cut, but I did not. The rejection disappointed me, though I assume my mother was secretly relieved that our house would not be filled with the noises of an aspiring drummer. And thus I became a flute player.
A year later, it was Connie’s turn to choose an instrument and somehow she chose the trumpet. If you had passed by our house that year, on any given day your ears would have been confronted with the off-tune sounds of three kids, dutifully practicing our mandatory minimum of twenty minutes a day. And for many years of Sunday mornings after that, any visitor to our church would have heard our orchestra in the front: the three Sprague children plus the Gungors and a few others playing in the song service.
I didn’t know at the time that the flute was a “girl’s” instrument and it was several years before I noticed that I was the only boy flautist in the band. Despite the normal awkwardness of any teenager pressured to conform, I don’t remember ever regretting my choice. In fact, I appreciated the many advantages of a flute compared to other instruments: its size makes it much easier to carry and cheaper too. Unlike reed instruments like my brother’s saxophone, there are no consumables. I also liked the smooth, simple sounds and the range. The result was that I found the flute enjoyable to play, and I practiced enough to become the best in the school.
In our regular competitions, I always placed first, advancing to regionals and finally to win at the state contests too.
Well, that’s not quite true. I wasn’t always first. Each year, our high school band held auditions to determine the seating arrangement for each instrument section. We were each given a set piece to play into a tape recorder, which would then be blindly evaluated later by the teacher for ranking. Somehow I came under the impression that the point of the audition was to see who could play the piece fastest. I practiced and practiced until I got my time under some unbelievably quick number of seconds.
Thinking there was no way my rapid performance couldn’t have been best, imagine my disappointment when the final seating chart showed I was among the last – sixth out of eight. Upon discovering my error, I asked the teacher if I could try my audition again. The rules were fixed, he said, so I would be stuck in my seat … unless, he added, I went through a process of challenging my superior seat-holder.
A “challenge” meant that I would formally invite a higher seat holder to undergo another recorded audition, where each of us would play a piece to be evaluated blindly by the teacher. Whoever wins that competition would take the higher seat.
And thus I systematically challenged my way from sixth place to first, in a process that must have taken weeks. But I never lost my first place again.
Gary too did well at these contests and he continued to play regularly through high school, when he joined our jazz band. As the lead alto saxophonist, he played weekly at sports games throughout the year, developing a reputation as a solid, reliable performer. Like me and Connie, he practiced regularly throughout the year to avoid disappointing Mr. Rasmussen in our regular music lessons.
We didn’t think of music as anything special – it was just something our family did.
Much later, upon entering college I auditioned for a place in the Stanford orchestra. The judge asked me the name of my teacher. Mr. Rasmussen was hardly famous enough for that, and I wondered why they bothered to ask. “You play remarkably well for never having had a teacher”, he said.