The next day was the Fourth of July (for the United States) and we pulled into Yellowstone National Park. We stayed in the cabins near Old Faithful. We went in the school buses to a creek and went swimming. There was a tire swing hanging over the creek and it was sure nice and cool. On the way back a group of girls led us in singing many verses of Oh You Can’t Get To Heaven. One of the verses went like this:
Oh you can’t get to heaven,
In a Kleenex box,
Because the Lord don’t want,
No little snots!
That night we gave a concert at the Old Faithful Lodge for the tourists that were there. Our final number of the concert, was the Stars and Stripes Forever. All the string basses had little American flags that we placed on the top of our basses. We had played that number in most every concert on the tour. Now I was over-come with emotion. I was practically bawling and trying to play at the same time. I really lost it when all the brass instruments stood up – all of them my friends – and played the fanfare, Three Cheers For The Red White And Blue! Here I was back in the United States, I was with such a great group of friends, and we had been playing such good music. I feel the same way, and I think about that moment every time I hear The Stars and Stripes Forever. And all this was going to end. Sure I missed home and I missed my family. But this fabulous tour of the north-western part of the United States and Canada was coming to a close. We had our usual dance but most of the tourists were much older and didn’t want to attend a rock dance. And the rest of us were tired of dancing with each other. It seemed that most of the tour romances had fizzled and everyone was either just friends or on each others’ nerves. A large group of us went to a cabin and had an impromptu testimony meeting. Yes a bunch of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen-year-olds can do very good things even when left to their own devices. It was actually one of the most spiritual testimony meetings of my life.
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