Salute to Burlington

An old postcard is like a message in a bottle
floating on the sea of time.
After decades adrift through storms and doldrums
eventually it washes up onto a distant beach
far from where the sender ever expected it to go.

 This genial old tuba player,
with his straw hat, bow tie, and twisted mustache,
is one of those castaways
whose timeworn photo postcard
was destined to be marooned
on the shores of my photograph collection.

It happens that his arrival here
in western North Carolina
means he has actually not traveled far
from where he started
in the mountains of southwestern Virginia.
 

Study his face and you might see
a resemblance to a well known person of our time.
It could be another case of a time traveling celebrity,
so who do you think he looks like?

He sits on a wooden box
next to a heavy chain link fence
that guards a large industrial work site.
Behind him a long conveyor stretches up,
perhaps for moving coal or gravel into a railroad hopper car.
His broad brimmed hat looks appropriate
for what looks like a warm summer day,
as in fact it is some time around the 31st of August, 1908.

The location was somewhere near Konnarock,
a small community in the mountains
of Washington County, Virginia
just downhill from the Appalachian Trail,
and about 125 miles northeast of my desk.
 
The note in the bottle is brief and to the point,
and is a rare musical message.
It is addressed to:

Mr. Wm. Snyder
Middleburg,
Synder Co.,
Penn'a.

Will. –
"Salute to
Burlington" March
by Geo. D. Sherman.
Issues by Jean
M. Missud, Salem
Mass.
Yours truly,
M. K. H.

The composer of Salute to Burlington, George Dallas Sherman was a Vermont native, born in 1844. During the Civil War he served as a musician in the 9th Vermont Infantry. After the war he returned to Burlington where he organized Sherman's Military Band in 1878. It became a much celebrated band in the region and he was its leader until retirement in 1917. George D. Sherman was also a composer of numerous band marches and this one was published in 1888. Tragically Sherman died in 1927 after being struck by an automobile while crossing a street near his home. He was 83. Even more tragic was that most of his compositions were lost in a fire that occurred the same year as his death.

Today the Burlington Concert Band continues a Vermont tradition of music making that began in 1851. They performed "Salute to Burlington", at their Sunday concert on July 24, 2016 at the Battery Park high above Lake Champlain.

***

***

As we listen to the music
that inspired this message in a bottle
it seems fitting
to follow the same tuba part
that Mr. M. K. H. would have played.

So did you guess the time-traveling celebrity?

How about Sir Anthony Hopkins
as Henry Wilcox in the 1992 film
Howards End ?

And to add more proof of time travel,
Anthony Hopkins is also an amateur composer whose works
have been recorded by the modern waltz king, André Rieu,
and by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
 

Evidently he can play the tuba too.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where something fishy is going on.