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Most years, I've taken sort of mediocre paying jobs, that I accepted just for fun. Some of them involved marching for a half hour and then playing at a party for an hour and a half... All sousaphone, all the time, all as loud as I could play. (I believe I've posted some little video clips of a couple of those in the past on this platform.)

This year, I was actually offered one that's only about 40 minutes from blokeplace (which is quite remarkable, if you knew where I live - which is in the middle of nowhere)... and it actually pays a few hundred bucks and doesn't last that long.

It's in an antique mall - of all places (a former Walmart, before they built a bigger one a block away) - in an southeastern (fairly safe and upscale) incorporated suburb of Memphis. I'm sort of wondering if it's a private party and that maybe some group is renting out the antique mall as a venue for their party (??) but I have no idea. I didn't ask. There's no tune list nor any annoying-@$$ rehearsal. I did ask if there's any marching and was told "no", so I'm taking the 1958 recording bell Besson 3+1 compensating E-flat. It's probably going to be about 58° at load-in time, and all I have to load in this time is myself and the tuba.

I don't know whether it's going to be pancakes or King cake.
(I'm back on the nearly-no-carbs wagon, so neither for me.)

There's a Harbor Freight next door, so maybe I'll pick up a new rawhide mallet. (The only stuff I buy at that place is stuff with no moving parts.)

Unfortuately, the Harbor Freight website doesn't show any rawhide mallets or rawhide hammers, so you may be out of luck, but there are plenty of other toys to choose from.

Jperry1466 wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 11:04 pm Unfortuately, the Harbor Freight website doesn't show any rawhide mallets or rawhide hammers, so you may be out of luck, but there are plenty of other toys to choose from.

Oh well, if I cleaned up I'd probably find a couple that I forgot that I had. I have one large one and one small one that I know of and that I can put my hands on.

Since I am committed to my policy of not buying anything from Harbor Freight that has any moving parts, maybe I'll buy a Harbor Freight compressor or generator... It just needs to be a month old.

We’re playing a 2 hour second line followed by dinner and then a ninety minute set. We’ve been conditioning for it and are feeling strong!

Michigan Mardi Gras can be brutal weather wise, especially in mid February, but tomorrow may hit 50!

Http://www.redhorse.red/ssl

Yeah. I really don't like the cold weather parade thing.
Mardi Gras is really best suited for the Gulf Coast. Two years in a row, I did a parade in Jonesboro, Arkansas which is in the northern part of Arkansas. Of course it's to the west of Memphis, but it's also probably 30 or 40 miles to the north which makes a little bit of difference. Additionally, it's up on a ridge which is a geographic feature known as Crowley's Ridge - back in super prehistoric times that ridge was the western bank of a giant waterway of melted glacial ice that eventually became the less than one mile wide Mississippi River...
...so it's a little bit north and up high, and if Memphis is lucky enough to have 40° temperatures during Mardi Gras, Jonesboro Arkansas is probably going to be 36°.
The first year I did it was a month after some super major hernia surgery, and I thought I would be fine after a month... I could barely do the 30-minute parade, but it's probably a pretty good thing that I made myself do it, and then did the stand and play party afterward. All of that, plus driving over there and back was quite an outing for someone recovering from surgery, but I believe it gave me a boost both physically and as far as confidence was concerned.

I have the day off, thankfully.

bloke wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 11:18 pm

Jperry1466 wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 11:04 pm Unfortuately, the Harbor Freight website doesn't show any rawhide mallets or rawhide hammers, so you may be out of luck, but there are plenty of other toys to choose from.

Oh well, if I cleaned up I'd probably find a couple that I forgot that I had. I have one large one and one small one that I know of and that I can put my hands on.

Since I am committed to my policy of not buying anything from Harbor Freight that has any moving parts, maybe I'll buy a Harbor Freight compressor or generator... It just needs to be a month old.

Hey, my HF 23 gal compressor just turned 5. It's lasted longer than my Porter Cable one did. (I'm really surprised too, to be honest.) It's one of the ones with oil, just don't try to use it below about 25 degrees, as something freezes up and blows the 16amp fuse in the garage.

I was more joking that being literal.
All tools with moving parts wear out, including Honda generators.
Most everything is made in China...If there's a best-HF-offers version/line, it's probably as good (and less expensive) than the fake American (all made in China, other than crazy-expensive TRULY industrial) brands.

Well...
That was a heck of a lot of tunes - one after the other.

Thankfully I knew all of them, and didn't have to look at the lead sheets. When I did glance at some of them, the chord changes tended to sort of be "Sears and Roebuck-ish,"...but isn't it the rhythm section's job to play better changes than the ones in the "Real Book"? The chording instrument was a really good guitar player who - for this - brought his four string tenor banjo. For any of you who play, his is an old Vega. I've worked with him several times before. He's a fine player. The drummer is a nice guy who haven't seen in quite a few years. We are thinking back to the last time we played together. It was at a Memphis Grizzlies game. We were younger. His time is really good, and that made the job easy.

They had food spread out all over this Walmart sized antique mall... but you sort of had to find it.

In the back were a bunch of desserts and coffee.

I grabbed up some cookies and a mini cupcake for Mrs.bloke and I found some coffee for myself. Hey, they had REAL cream for the coffee.

The best food they had there was some chicken alfredo which was surprisingly spicy. It was delicious.

I passed on the wine and liquor... Forty minutes home down two lane dark roads... I didn't need to have any alcohol in me.

Mostly we played. I think out of the 3 hours we probably played 2 hours and a half... That's lots of notes. The bass never rests. The guy who was subcontracting as the leader said - at the end - "the few times I had you played choruses you played the best ones" to which I replied "I'm old. I guess I've played a few."

I had a pretty good time. ' got me out of the house...

.

I was a bad human, and was half an hour late for rehearsal, mostly due to not paying attention to the time, but also not taking public transit often enough to accurately gauge travel time.

And i might not have noticed the gras-ness of the mardi if not for the festive attire of a certain oboe player.

All of the recycling of crapped out metal goods re: @tofu just goes over to China so they can make some more chainsaws, generators, compressors and weed eaters that will crap out.

(I recycle all of our waste metal, because of the weight. It costs too much when I take it to the dump. There are people I can call who will pick it up. Of course, the only thing that goes in my box of scrap brass is stuff that I just can't possibly imagine using for anything... But I'm more of a person who brazes cracks, rather than patching them.)

I will be interested in seeing how long my modern Stihl MS462C-M lasts against the perfect saw, my 044, 10mm. wrist pin, slant fin.

My two chainsaws are Swedish ones.

I always wanted
to learn to play a mean saw...
New goal: Mardi Gras?'

Just more new questions
Play what?! How? I know who, when.
A whole year to answer...

A fifteen amp fuse is just too small for a compressor. You need at least a twenty amp to handle the starting current. A motor is a dead short until it starts turning. Very high starting currents. Heavy extension cord totally laid out if used. A wound up cord is a choke and will slow the starting of the motor, thus longer starting current time that will blow twenty amp fuses as well.

My compressor is a big-@$$ Devilbiss...It sits on top of the ceiling of one of the rooms in our barn.
It looks like a great big hot water tank (vertical).

I had a friend bring his forklift over here to get it up there (years ago).

bloke wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 11:18 pm

Jperry1466 wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 11:04 pm Unfortuately, the Harbor Freight website doesn't show any rawhide mallets or rawhide hammers, so you may be out of luck, but there are plenty of other toys to choose from.

Oh well, if I cleaned up I'd probably find a couple that I forgot that I had. I have one large one and one small one that I know of and that I can put my hands on.

Since I am committed to my policy of not buying anything from Harbor Freight that has any moving parts, maybe I'll buy a Harbor Freight compressor or generator... It just needs to be a month old.

Good call! I don't refer to it as "Horrible Fraud" because they do things right . . .

bloke wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 10:44 pmHarbor Freight (The only stuff I buy at that place is stuff with no moving parts.)

My policy for Harbor Freight: Is it under $20 and do I only need it once?

I have this Homelite chainsaw that I bought new in 1978. It cut firewood for me and to sell and was used one summer on a tree thinning project for the USFS. I still have it. I re-ringed the cylinder after the thinning project. It has the original roller-tip bar bar and has gone through countless chains.

It's noisy. It vibrates. It has lots of power. And it still starts every time. I'm really too old to be using it so I'm not buying another. My point is that If you can find things that were made before they were made non-repairable, they're worth fixing and using. And that includes musical instruments.