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Will McAfee, Trumpet<\/p>\nWill McAfee, Trumpet<\/p>\n
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“At some point you have to surrender to what you really love to do.”<\/p>\n
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I was born in 1948 in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, upriver from Pittsburgh.\u00a0 Monongahela is named after the river\u2014Monongahela Valley, the city of Monongahela and of course the Monongahela River which meets the Allegheny in Pittsburg and forms the Ohio\u2014the Golden Triangle.\u00a0 My parents both worked and so my great grandmother took care of me.\u00a0 We lived on the third floor of a building that was right on the main street downtown and she lived next door.\u00a0 Our back view was the river where there were paddlewheel steamboats and between the house and the river were the railroad tracks.\u00a0 My father was a fireman for the steam locomotives.\u00a0 He would drive by in his train slowly and wave to me, his six year old son.<\/p>\n
My mother had eight siblings, seven sisters and a brother, the oldest, who became a painter of trains and got commissioned by my father to paint the train that my dad worked on.\u00a0 That\u2019s the picture I carried away when we left when I was six\u2014the Monongahela, the river and the trains on the edge of the river bank and the steamboat.<\/p>\n
I was born in the administration of Harry Truman, \u201cGive \u2018em hell, Harry\u201d.\u00a0 That was a theme of my growing up.\u00a0 My parents didn\u2019t really get along that well.\u00a0 They should never have been together.\u00a0 He was a Democrat, a working man, you know.\u00a0 My mother was raised in a Republican family.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t go beyond that.\u00a0 She said, \u201cMy parents were Republican, I was raised Republican, so I\u2019m a Republican.\u201d\u00a0 That came into play in 1952.\u00a0 \u00a0I was probably too young to know anything except that Eisenhower was like the father figure.\u00a0 I was eight years old and my dad\u2019s saying to me, \u201cYou\u2019re going to vote for Stevenson, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNo, Daddy, I like Eisenhower,\u201d because\u00a0 that I\u2019d seen him on television and he was like a primal father figure on \u201cThe Days of My Life.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m a Republican.\u201d\u00a0 It was the beginning of the theme of the opposing forces in my family.<\/p>\n
I was the only child.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve studied psychology you know that that\u2019s one of the most difficult positions in the family as far as people being well adjusted\u2014only children and the oldest of a big family.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s oldest sister was kind of crazy.\u00a0 She was a source of embarrassment and amusement for the family but it was very sad the way she treated her children.<\/p>\n
Both of my parents were born in Monongahela.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s father was a Nazarene minister so they were very religious.\u00a0 He was a gentle guy.\u00a0 It was funny because some of his girls liked the bad boys.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s older sister married a Navy man who was rough and tumble.\u00a0 My dad was kind of a juvenile delinquent in high school when she married him.\u00a0 He was also in the Navy during the war but he never saw combat.\u00a0 I have pictures of him in his uniform.<\/p>\n
The music came from my mother\u2019s side of the family.\u00a0 Her sisters could sing.\u00a0 In fact the youngest sister, my aunt Marilyn, went to Carnegie Mellon when it was still called Carnegie Tech.\u00a0 She was a music major and she became a music teacher, a piano teacher, a choir director.\u00a0 She was talented.\u00a0 When they would get together and sing they would do three or four part harmonies.<\/p>\n
When the Pennsylvania Railroad started converting to diesel from steam my dad\u00a0 got laid off because he was a fireman.\u00a0 His older brother had already come to California and was settled here.\u00a0 He had been in the Marine Corps and went to Duquesne University on the GI Bill.\u00a0 He was a very dapper guy, liked to dress up nice and he had a nice car, a De Soto.\u00a0 He was an accountant.<\/p>\n
My dad and he were opposites.\u00a0 A teacher who had the both of them told my dad, \u201cYour brother was a gentleman and a scholar.\u00a0 You, I just don\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0 My dad ended up dropping out.<\/p>\n
The brother said, \u201cCome on out to California.\u00a0 Bring your family.\u00a0 We\u2019ll help you get settled.\u00a0 You can live with us until you get going.\u201d<\/p>\n
We drove out in a 1955 Pontiac Silver Chief.\u00a0 They liked to drive nice cars even though they didn\u2019t have much.\u00a0 That was my first of about half a dozen trips back and forth across the country, a lot on old Route 66.\u00a0 We went through all those towns: Joplin, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico.\u00a0 We got into the dessert and I remember Kingman and then Flagstaff, Arizona.\u00a0 Then you get into California and the Mojave Dessert–it was so hot.\u00a0 Back then the cars didn\u2019t have air conditioning.\u00a0 We were trying to get some sleep in the back of the car since we\u2019d been up all night and we were all just sweating.\u00a0 My mom and I were in the back seat and my dad was in the front seat.\u00a0 Excruciating heat.\u00a0 But that\u2019s how we got out there.<\/p>\n
I started first grade in Monongahela and I finished in Fullerton.\u00a0 Fullerton is interesting because it\u2019s the home of Home Musical Instruments, the Fender.\u00a0 There were music programs in the schools.\u00a0 I was in fifth grade and there was an opportunity to learn an instrument and my mother encouraged me to do that.\u00a0 She was a nurse and she worked her whole life.\u00a0 And she liked to sing.\u00a0 She would sing along with the radio.\u00a0 They both liked music.\u00a0 Even my dad had something of an ear.\u00a0\u00a0I was exposed to a lot of different types of music.\u00a0 They joined the Columbia Record Club but the records would come but they’d just sit there.\u00a0 We had a phonograph so I started listening\u2014Scheherazade by Rimsky Korsakov, Rhapsody in Blue, Capitol Records History of Jazz, volume 1.\u00a0 All kinds of stuff.<\/p>\n
My folks were raised with a prejudiced attitude.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they had the kind of hate and hostility that was prevalent in the South but back then in the \u201850s and \u201840s that\u2019s what they were raised with.\u00a0 But Anaheim, California, had this Melodyland Theater–theater in the round there but also music.\u00a0 I even went to see the second fight between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay there.\u00a0 (It was over the in first round.)\u00a0 They went to see Ray Charles and they just<\/em> loved it.\u00a0 They kept raving about that.\u00a0 My mother said, \u201cIt was pretty racy.\u201d\u00a0 (laughs)\u00a0 She was very conservative.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know why I picked the trumpet.\u00a0 I probably didn\u2019t like Louis Armstrong at that time, didn\u2019t have the taste that I do now but I knew other trumpet players like Louis Prima.\u00a0 I had a record album of his.\u00a0 And of course Al Hirt.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t remember how I ended up playing trumpet.\u00a0 My first trumpet cost $140.\u00a0 It was brand new at Fullerton Music.\u00a0 I took private lessons for a while before high school.\u00a0 And then after one year of high school I dropped it.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t play for forty years.\u00a0 I started getting interested in cars and took auto shop.\u00a0 And I loved to play sports though I was never good enough at anything to compete.\u00a0 I was a distance runner.<\/p>\n When I was nineteen and we started to listen to rock and roll, I picked up the guitar.\u00a0 That was mostly what I played for those forty years.\u00a0 I was never in a band but I had a friend Randy who had learned to play the organ.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t taken piano lessons but he learned a method taught to him by his organ teacher who played bowling allies, the Lowrey Organ.\u00a0 But then Randy got into the Hammond Organ which is what all the jazz and rock and roll people play.\u00a0 And he got into groups; he was starting to have gigs in his early 20s, right around Disneyland.\u00a0 The Disneyland Hotel hired bands.<\/p>\n I was a lost soul.\u00a0 We call it depression now.\u00a0 My dad was a high school dropout.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWell, Bill, you\u2019ve got to get a college education.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do what I did.\u00a0 Don\u2019t make it hard on yourself.\u201d\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do.\u00a0 I would have been better off traveling and having some life experiences.\u00a0 Instead I went to school and I think it contributed to my depression.\u00a0 It would have been interesting to take courses in history or English but I registered late at Cal State Fullerton and they had psychology classes available so I said, \u201cI\u2019ll take that.\u201d<\/p>\n I was freaking out, stuck in my head, unable to express my deep feelings for women.\u00a0 I felt like I was starting to go mad.\u00a0 I was lucky that I even got out of college.\u00a0 I was minoring in philosophy.\u00a0 The philosophy of mind professor had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.\u00a0 He had been a TA for Angela Davis.\u00a0 He would start talking, get real emotional and start crying and walk out of the classroom.\u00a0 But we had deep and very interesting discussions.\u00a0 When I moved away from Fullerton I read that he was on trial for murder.\u00a0 (editor: In 1986 Richard L. Smith was convicted of killing the estranged husband of his girlfriend and former student, Consuela Matter.\u00a0 His attorney presented psychiatrists and psychologists who testified that he was mentally ill with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but the juors were not convinced.<\/em>)<\/p>\n We went to someone\u2019s house and listened to the Moody Blues as part of the Philosophy of Mind class that I loved.<\/p>\n I met a guy in a physiological psychology class and we took a second class together, psychopharmacology.\u00a0 We hit it off.\u00a0 He was a guitar player too and still is, a very interesting fellow.\u00a0 I found him to be a kindred spirit.\u00a0\u00a0I would go to his house and we would play music and talk about mysticism and expanding consciousness.\u00a0 By that time I had done acid once.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a great experience but we would smoke weed and have these very ethereal conversations.\u00a0 We once went hiking in the Sierras for about four days too.<\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t seen him since 1973 but finally I said, \u201cI wonder what happened to that guy.\u201d\u00a0 So I looked him up.\u00a0 I Googled his phone number and we had this great conversation.\u00a0 He\u2019s living out in Massachusetts.\u00a0 He had become a counselor.\u00a0 And he made a CD with some friends of his.\u00a0 He\u2019s a really good fingerpicking guitar player.\u00a0 They play these old blues songs.<\/p>\n Anyway, I finally got out of college, graduated.\u00a0 My dad had said, \u201cWell, Bill, you\u2019ve got to get your education\u201d so now I\u2019ve got this degree in psychology and what am I going to do with that?<\/p>\n I got a motorcycle, a Honda 750, and headed up the coast to see a friend who lived on the Monterey Peninsula.\u00a0 I have always loved that area.\u00a0 I ended up staying with him and lived there for three years just being a free spirit.\u00a0 I had unemployment from some different jobs I had done and there was a beach where all the young hippies would hang out, a place to meet girls.\u00a0 And I was going to the bars and making a lot of friends there.\u00a0 For a while I wondered why they ended up being kind of crazy but that\u2019s because I met them in a bar; they were all alcoholics.\u00a0 Sort of a John Steinbeck thing.\u00a0 In fact, it was the same place–Cannery Row before it got to where it is now.\u00a0 There were a few nice new places there but the rest of it was just old dilapidated canneries.\u00a0 I lived a block above Cannery Row in a dirt floor garage that I paid thirty bucks a month for.\u00a0 I had a friend who used to go up to Oregon and pick psilocybin.\u00a0 He\u2019d come back and I\u2019d buy everything he had.\u00a0 I had a wonderful experience on acid at Tassahara Hot Springs.\u00a0 That was probably my peak experience of all time.<\/p>\n And I was reading.\u00a0 A couple of books that were really significant to me were Ram Dass\u2019s Be Here Now<\/em> and the Autobiography of a Yogi<\/em> by Yogananda.\u00a0 They really resonated with me.<\/p>\n It was not a very stable environment but I did have guitar gigs for some of that time.\u00a0 I had been exposed to so many kinds of music that I could never settle on one style.\u00a0 I liked jazz, I liked Rock and Roll, I liked the Grateful Dead and what other rock musicians were doing.\u00a0 And the folk thing.\u00a0 Every time I heard something that was really nice I said, \u201cI want to be able to play that.\u201d<\/p>\n Timothy Leary said the summer of love started in 1967 and ended in 1980 with the election of Nancy Reagan.\u00a0 Leary was an interesting guy and of course he was a psychologist too.\u00a0 What an incredible faculty Harvard University had!\u00a0 Ram Dass was there; Leary was there and the Allport brothers.\u00a0 Fantastic place in \u201973 but by that time it was really only alive in places like Berkeley and maybe Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n After three years in Monterey I ran out of unemployment and money and I had a buddy who said, \u201cWe can go to Sonoma County where we can pick fruit, apples and such,\u201d so I hitchhiked out there and my friend Roger\u2014We used to call him Roger the dodger.\u2014got as far as Santa Cruz.\u00a0 He spent the night in the hospital there our first night on the road.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to go any further.\u201d\u00a0 So I was on my own and I thought, \u201cThis is great.\u00a0 I\u2019m hitchhiking.\u00a0 It\u2019s an adventure.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do next.\u201d\u00a0 I found my way up to Santa Rosa on a bus where I met this long haired guy, Joseph Goodale, who had a fancy serape on.\u00a0 We struck up a conversation about these deep and heavy things.\u00a0 He was going to Sonoma State and after we talked he said, \u201cWell, why don\u2019t you come and stay with us?\u201d\u00a0 It turned out to be this fantastic house of students and other people.\u00a0 They had a teepee and a nine acre piece of property that was right on Petaluma Hill Road where the Green Center is now.\u00a0 They did peyote rituals on the full moon a la the Native American Church.\u00a0 They called themselves the Full Moon Tribe.\u00a0 I had found kindred spirits.\u00a0 When I was in Monterey it was more people who were kind of flawed.\u00a0 They were in bars and they drank a lot and of course they smoked pot and did acid and all that stuff.\u00a0 The people in that house at Sonoma State were much more refined.\u00a0 They were kind and into positive things and politically active.\u00a0 They did the medicine and the circles became a venue for healing.\u00a0 That became a tool for me to use.\u00a0 Sonoma State was called Granola State at that time.\u00a0 It was like Cotati.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s more like Rohnert Park.<\/p>\n We had drum circles and this guy in Cotati named Avi built African drums out of redwood.\u00a0 Several of us owned drums that were built by him and we learned African drumming.\u00a0 I sat in on African drumming and music theory classes at Sonoma State and when Diamandopoulos was president I sat in on one of his philosophy classes.\u00a0 Very interesting.\u00a0 So for Joseph\u2019s graduation\u2014to be in psychology you needed to have a project\u2014he\u2019s talking about the peyote rituals and he\u2019s leading chants and drumming and all these people are dressed up in their robes, their long Mexican blankets, playing their drums with long hair and everything.\u00a0 That\u2019s how he got his bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology.<\/p>\n From out of all that came a desire to go home and help my mother whom I had been estranged with.\u00a0 I remember one of those all night circles.\u00a0 I left early and went into the house and wrote my mother a letter.\u00a0 And I ended up going back there and it was partly out of concern but more a selfish desire to make some money because my uncle\u2014my mother\u2019s sister\u2019s husband\u2014was an executive in Chevron and he said, \u201cWell, if you come back here to live I can get you a job as a lab tech and you can make some decent money.\u201d\u00a0 So I said, \u201cOh, I like that!\u201d\u00a0 So I went back and lived with my mom for two and a half years.\u00a0 I worked at Occidental Research Corporation which is the research wing of Occidental Petroleum.<\/p>\n But I met a girl there who had left Occidental and moved out to Berkeley to complete her degree in computer science.\u00a0 I had some time off and I called her up and I said, \u201cI\u2019ve got to get out of here.\u00a0 I\u2019m living with my mother in Southern California.\u00a0 I\u2019m miserable.\u00a0 Can I come up and see you?\u201d\u00a0 So I went up and spent the weekend with her and it was what I needed.\u00a0 (laughs)\u00a0 She had already graduated and she was about to go to Israel to live on a kibbutz.\u00a0 I ended up giving my notice at Occidental.\u00a0 I was lucky.\u00a0 They were laying people off and I got a big severance packet, a bunch of money.\u00a0 So I ended up just going up there and stayed at Cordenesis Village in Albany Ca. where she lived.\u00a0 She had turned me on to the sailing club so I spent a lot of time sailing.\u00a0 I got unemployment and then I worked at construction and got involved with several women.<\/p>\n I still haven\u2019t figured out what I was doing in Berkeley.\u00a0 It was the end of that period when I was doing psychedelic drugs.\u00a0 I ended up in living on Telegraph and Durant in 1982.\u00a0 Coming from my background .\u00a0 .\u00a0 .\u00a0 The city I grew up in was conservative Orange County.\u00a0 It\u2019s not even the conservative of it but the homogeneity.\u00a0 For me it was a kind of a bizarre environment.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of dirt and filth and it\u2019s rougher but there are a lot of interesting cultural things.\u00a0 And there were street people.\u00a0 \u00a0The Bay Area seemed pretty radical to me but by the time I got there it wasn\u2019t the red Berkeley with the radical politics.\u00a0 In fact many of the people in the apartment where I lived were former Reagan people.\u00a0 Every once in a while there\u2019d be some kind of big protest, almost like a flashback and people would march up and down Telegraph Avenue but Berkeley just didn\u2019t have that same vibe.\u00a0 People\u2019s Park at that point was an enclave for homeless people.\u00a0 A lot of homeless people suffer from mental problems.\u00a0 There was one guy who was there, a big guy and because he had a pack on his back he almost looked like a hunchback.\u00a0 He was homeless but he didn\u2019t seem to have any of those kind of issues.\u00a0 He was just living on the street.\u00a0 I was gone for years and years and when I came back, I saw him and he remembered me.<\/p>\n After I had been in Berkeley for two and a half years I went down to visit my mother.\u00a0 She looked awful when she opened the door.\u00a0 She was fifty-eight, retired and a diabetic with all the complications from having diabetes from the age of thirty-three: retinopathy, kidney failure and high blood pressure.\u00a0 After I was there for a few days she collapsed and died right in front of me.\u00a0 I had to stay down there settling the estate and selling her house and when I left I moved up to Sonoma County again instead of going back to Berkeley.\u00a0 I enjoyed part of being in Berkeley but I like nature.\u00a0\u00a0I had money from the inheritance and I wanted to buy property so I got this place in Mendocino County.\u00a0 That was 1986.<\/p>\n I became a painting contractor.\u00a0 There was a lot of work available.\u00a0 You get a job, you go for a week and then you go somewhere else to another job.\u00a0 You get to meet different people, you get to work different places and then there would be time off in between.\u00a0 I really enjoyed that.\u00a0 I got into doing some big jobs and I had to hire employees and (laughs) some of these guys who are painters are pretty crazy.\u00a0 The biggest job I did was an eighty unit condominium complex in Lakeport\u2014nineteen two story buildings, seventeen fourplexes and two sixplexes.\u00a0 And it wasn\u2019t new construction.\u00a0 People were living there so we couldn\u2019t spray.\u00a0 It was all brush and roll.\u00a0 It was big.\u00a0 I had about four other guys working for me at one point.\u00a0 And then it got crazy, paying workers\u2019 compensation and social security and stuff.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t working financially.\u00a0 My happiest times were either working by myself or working with just one other guy.<\/p>\n But I found out that I was plugged into one of the premier growing centers (editor: marijuana<\/em>) in Northern California.\u00a0 So I got into that business too and not long after that the prices went up to an all-time high.\u00a0 It was the right place at the right time.\u00a0 I was able to stay at home in this beautiful place around nature that I love and make a living doing it.\u00a0 I did that on and off for about twenty-four years.<\/p>\n I had stumbled into this community and within that community it was all set up.\u00a0 That was the beauty of it.\u00a0 People would come to my house and buy as much as I had and at a higher price at that time\u2014for a while it was $5000 a pound.\u00a0 I consider myself very fortunate but because the price was high it was dangerous.\u00a0 There were rip offs and you had to guard your stuff.\u00a0 And then of course there was the government trying to bust you.\u00a0 It was a creative thing trying to deal with both of those things.\u00a0 Sometimes you just don\u2019t feel comfortable leaving home.<\/p>\n I did it on and off for about twenty-four years but after eight years of being up here\u2014\u201988 to \u201994\u2014I really missed my community in Sonoma County.\u00a0 So I ended up going down there.\u00a0 I rented for a while and then bought a place.\u00a0 For many, many years I was going back and force between Mendocino and Sonoma County and most of my social life was in Sonoma County\u2014the cultural stuff, all the great music.\u00a0 There was great stuff in Mendocino too but I had gotten put off by some of the experiences I had had with my neighbors and I had withdrawn from the community.<\/p>\n Back in \u201994 when I decided to go back to Sonoma County I reconnected with some people.\u00a0 One old friend was married to a music promoter who did the Kate Wolf Festival.\u00a0 Before that he had the Celtic Festival in Sebastopol.\u00a0 He promoted shows at the Community Center in Sebastopol and in some of the bars, mostly groups like the Old Blind Dogs from Scotland, Celtic musicians.\u00a0 He started the Celtic Festival which went on for a few years.\u00a0 I had money so I became one of the sponsors and I helped him.\u00a0 And he let me do a set on one of the side stages.\u00a0 I was starting to play guitar with some of my old friends.<\/p>\n I met a woman I eventually married whose ex-husband and father-in-law had the Sebastopol Community Band.\u00a0 Her ex-husband asked me, \u201cDo you play anything?\u201d\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t played the trumpet in forty years but he said, \u201cCome on and join the band.\u201d\u00a0 I pulled out the trumpet and the valves were all stuck.\u00a0 I had to take it to a place where they had a vice and could pull it apart.\u00a0 They finally got it working.\u00a0 So I started playing the trumpet again in 2004.\u00a0 I met a whole group of people, good people.\u00a0 There were two trumpet players in our section, one of whom was Chuck McCormick who plays trumpet in the New Horizons Band.\u00a0 And he would tell me about the New Horizons Band.<\/p>\n When Frank, the original founder and conductor of the Sebastopol Community Band, died there were a few people who came and went but there were a lot of gaps so Chuck McCormick said, \u201cI\u2019m a founding member of the New Horizons Band.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you come and play with us.\u201d\u00a0 I did my last crop in 2014 and rented the place out to a grower who was paying me quite a bit of money so I was able to just walk away for a while.\u00a0 I got a cheap place to live down in the Hessel area and joined the New Horizons Band in 2015 and I\u2019ve been playing off and on with them since then.\u00a0 There have been gaps.<\/p>\n I used to play guitar with one of my friends from the original Sonoma State crowd and he started playing ukulele so I took it up too around 2015.\u00a0\u00a0Then I joined the West County Ukulele group that meets at the Union Hotel in Occidental.\u00a0 Another trumpet player in the Sebastopol Community Band, John Victor who has since passed away, was also a ukulele player.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI belong to this ukulele group that rehearses at the Sebastopol Community Church.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you join that?\u201d\u00a0 I did but they haven\u2019t met since the pandemic.\u00a0 They did a few zooms but it\u2019s not the same.<\/p>\n West County Ukelele group was the first group I played with, then the Sebastopol Ukestars which is where I met my current partner, Lynn.\u00a0 I also play with a group that meets at Finley center in Santa Rosa.<\/p>\n The thing about the uke, it\u2019s so easy to play.\u00a0 I would have preferred to get into the mandolin.\u00a0 It was a financial thing.\u00a0 Mandolins are more expensive.\u00a0 The mandolin is of course tuned differently.\u00a0 The ukulele is tuned a fourth above a guitar.\u00a0 Sometimes if I\u2019m going back and forth from the guitar to the ukulele I get confused.\u00a0 A \u201cD\u201d on a guitar is a \u201cG\u201d on a ukulele.\u00a0 It sounds real nice and suddenly . . . a totally wrong chord.\u00a0 The standard classic tuning which would be a G C E A.\u00a0 On a standard classic ukulele that\u2019s a high G on the bottom.\u00a0 A lot of guys who started out on the guitar like the low string on the bottom which is what I play.\u00a0 Jake Shimabukuro, the world\u2019s greatest ukulele player, plays the standard tuning.\u00a0 What he can do with those four strings!<\/p>\n My partner Lynn’s twin sister passed away of dementia in February 2022.\u00a0 It was really a sad situation.\u00a0 We had a celebration of life after that where I played the ukulele and sang a song.\u00a0 Her caretaker wrote the words and I put the music to it.\u00a0 That was part of the celebration.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m playing trad jazz trumpet.\u00a0 We rehearse at Dave Stare\u2019s house and play at the Moose hall, both the blues hall and the big jam once a month.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got Mark Lightner, a trumpet player from Napa, Dave Stare and John Ray, Linda Green who plays clarinet and string bass.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got a guitar and a couple of banjo players.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got Pete, the piano player.\u00a0 And also Brian (trumpet) will come some times.\u00a0 He reads real well.\u00a0 In the Swing Band the trumpet has most of the solos but they\u2019re written.\u00a0 Improv is different.<\/p>\n There was this guy at the Moose Hall who was dancing with a very sleek woman with boots on.\u00a0 He was dapperly dressed, a bean pole, everything perfect about his appearance.\u00a0 And what a dancer he is.\u00a0 He\u2019s taking these babes out there and he\u2019s spinning them around and down, slick moves.<\/p>\n I am not comfortably retired.\u00a0 During the pandemic I was looking for ways to work from home and there were a lot of jobs for remote loan processers and loan originators.\u00a0 The more I applied for them the more I learned that I had to get my license which is a separate license from real estate because after the mortgage meltdown in 2008 they passed a bunch of legislation and you have to pass these tests that have a lot to do with ethics\u2014the does and the don\u2019ts.\u00a0 Some kinds of advertising are taboo.\u00a0 Giving people gifts is taboo.\u00a0 It cost a lot of money between the education and the license fees.\u00a0 It\u2019s been slow but I got my license.<\/p>\n I like doing websites so I\u2019ve got a website going.\u00a0 Most people have a business that develops through their circle of people, through their contacts.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve never been in the business and I wasn\u2019t successful in real estate because I don\u2019t have that kind of circle.\u00a0 The ex-wife and I got into that together and she was perfect for it because she has maintained relationships with all these people who live in Sebastopol for forty years and she has done a tremendous amount of business just through her friends and her friends refer other people and that\u2019s how it works.<\/p>\n I\u2019m more of a geek.\u00a0 I can maintain the website and I stay at home but that\u2019s a low probability proposition.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to get out there and press the flesh.<\/p>\n I’d rather work in the morning when I\u2019m refreshed than in the afternoon.\u00a0 When I\u2019m traveling twenty miles to Santa Rosa for rehearsals I\u2019m not as effective working the second half of the day.\u00a0 We\u2019re older people.\u00a0 It\u2019s a balancing act.\u00a0 I don\u2019t do that many drugs any more.\u00a0 You have to work more to get those idea out.\u00a0 They don\u2019t just fly out.\u00a0 But I like writing.\u00a0 I like writing so ngs.\u00a0 Writing a musical.\u00a0 I love being creative, playing my instruments, thinking ideas.\u00a0 At some point you have to surrender to what you really love to do.\u00a0 You think, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve got to make money, I\u2019ve got to do this or that.”\u00a0 Do what you love<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Will McAfee, Trumpet “At some point you have to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-806","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879,"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/806\/revisions\/879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhbsc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}