“Whaaat?!” There it was, Dad’s locally-famous howl of disbelief. As the son of a Presbyterian minister, he wasn’t much of a curser, so this was usually his way of saying, “What the hell is this shit?!” Many times he used “whaaat?” in half-jest – as a way of proclaiming a soft disapproval — a kinder, shorter way of saying, “Well that’s remarkably stupid but if you think it’s a good idea, go ahead. Dummy.” This was not one of those occasions.
“What does this uniform have to do with the Emerald Knights?!” We knew he was genuinely, furiously perplexed because he rarely raised his voice like this, except at wrestling meets. Thinking back on it, it may have been a mistake for Derek to bring home his new Emerald Knights uniform to try on for my parents’ approval. After all, it was their and the other parents’ valiant fundraising efforts over the last year that had helped to fund the new EK makeover.
Not that my dad was a fashionable man. He would, and did, choose a pocket protector over a pocket square every day of the week. And Mom, daytime schedule mercilessly jammed with cooking, cleaning, tending to her innumerable collections of miscellany and pretending not to watch soap operas, was a house-dress-until-noon afficionado. Still, they rarely missed an opportunity to cattily carp in private about perfectly well-intentioned outfits painstakingly cobbled together by others in their limited social circle.
“What did you think of that dress Shirley was wearing at church this morning?”
“I don’t know why she thinks she can get away with a dress like that. With those ankles?
And it certainly wasn’t often they were given the opportunity to critique a marching uniform. Really, who among us can claim that privilege? Anyway, they had to see it sooner or later and, to be fair, Derek was schoolgirl-giddy over the new look and dying to show it off. “What do you mean, Dad? This is the uniform everybody wanted!” The problem was, for all the months of speculation over what an authentic Emerald Knight (whatever that was) should look like, this new uniform, objectively speaking, shat the bed.
“Why is it red?!” my dad squawked loudly enough to inform the whole house, even though it was just the four of us there and we all could see, if not fully understand, what we were looking at. The pants were white polyester bell bottom slacks punctuated with one notable feature at the bottom: within each pant flair was housed a triangle-shaped swath of burgundy-colored satin, designed to catch the eye and suggest perhaps, that the insides of the pants were made of red satin?
Adorning the waist, bridging the disastrous lower half with a billowy and ruffled black satin blouse, was a five-inch wide burgundy cummerbund, with a long and wide plumed tassel hanging off of one side.
The black top was offset by a buttonless white polyester vest and an ascot fashioned from burgundy satin. Topping it off was a black felt caballero hat with a wide, flat brim and a burgundy satin hatband for good measure.
There was not a single whiff of green anywhere on the uniform and frankly, it’s a good thing because it would’ve clashed with all the burgundy. And, emerald or not, this was not the uniform of any knight we’d ever been introduced to. No, on the field, this was going to look more like a convention of half-assed mariachis with good footwork and snazzy pants.
But by now I’d been around the drum corps block – crushing on not just their musical themes but their looks — and I knew exactly what was afoot here. “You’re supposed to look like the Muchachos, right? Cool!”
The vaunted Muchachos Drum and Bugle Corps, hailing from Hawthorne, New Jersey, were the current bad boys of the drum corps scene. While admired as much for their Latin-themed repertoire and uniforms as their take-no-prisoners horn work, their recent meteoric rise to the top had taken an unseemly turn after they were disqualified from national competition for fielding overage members – a couple of 23 or 24-year-olds in a strictly 14 to 21-year-old’s game. But as disappointing as this was to us, it only added to their legend: they were the coolest.
Derek was quick to the defend his and the Emerald Knights’ honor. “No! I mean, well, it’s kind of like the Muchachos…but it’s totally different!” It was exactly the same.
“Why is it red? Aren’t you the EMERALD KNIGHTS? What’s the Munchachas?” Aside from Dad’s stubbornly intentional mispronunciation of a non-English word, these were all valid questions.
“Mu-cha-chos, Dad! They’re really good. But this is like, a totally different look from that.” No it wasn’t. “And it’s what everyone wants!”
“Is it Mexican? Are there knights in Mexico?” Another great question for the room that none of us knew the answer to.
Ever the diplomat and more street savvy than any of us, Mom played both sides. “Russ, if this is what the kids want, I think it’s neat. I want to see what the whole band…”
“Corps.”
“…I want to see what the whole corps looks like. But I would like to know how much it cost for these. They look expensive. Russ, you should talk to the manager about it.” Confrontation was not Dad’s field of study, but it never stopped Mom from ruthlessly attempting to press him into duty.
“Jim Bishop doesn’t know what he’s doing and I don’t trust him.”
“Well if you don’t trust him, you should definitely talk to him and try to get to the bottom of how much this cost.”
“For gosh sakes. Red uniforms. All right. I’ll talk to him.” It was settled then. Dad wouldn’t talk to Jim Bishop and the Emerald Knights would spend the next two seasons marching in black and red mariachi costumes.
City of Five Smells 