(Man, I am so pissed. Get an entry 97% done, and a pop-up window from a webpage open in another window decides to open in the Diaryland window. And *poof*. Entry gone. So here's a hasty reconstruction...)

We don't have many elevators in town.

Several in the hospital naturally, at four stories the tallest building in town. Or tallest in the county, for that matter. One elevator in the community building, one in a government office building, and I suspect a couple in the senior center. Several of the banks have one. There's probably a freight elevator in the high school, and a handicapped access as well, but I don't know where they are.

And there's not an escalator in town at all. Probably not one in the county. (Nor the counties east, west or north of us either.) But that's a different entry.

There is an elevator in the high school auditorium. One of those rising bandstands in front of the stage. A toy that they somehow manage to use at every band concert (usually to bring up the drum set and piano). And they used it tonight.

Tonight's concert was actually more of a gig than a concert. Just the jazz band with their trumpet-playing instructor and a guest sax player from the University. Who had braved the icy interstate to come over and spend the entire day with the jazz band students, teaching them some of the finer points of his craft.

Including how to play ad lib.

Something they each got to demonstrate in one of the numbers. Youngest son did well. Loud, clear, flowing. He's good enough to have fun with this stuff, now. (And also talking about acquiring a valve trombone... I didn't even know there was such a thing.)

But probably the most fun of the evening?

All the parents standing around the stage and on the stairs, visiting with each other, the band instructor and his entire family, and the guest musician, whilst the jazz band members all rode the bandstand elevator down to store the podiums (podia?) under the stage.

And then all the other kids from the audience dropping down onto the bandstand on its return trip, to ride the last meter or so to the top.

Small town amusements and thrills.

And if I hadn't had an expensive camera in my hands, I'd have jumped down to join them.