This is the bagpipe band I've been in since I started playing the bagpipes in 1984. This was Lee's band.
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This is The Man: Christopher J. Eline. He was my very first Pipe Sergeant ever. He was ... legendary. |
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This was at one of the band's annual Maine trips.
Shown: Shea, Eline, Werkheiser, and (peeking out from somewhere) Dave Kolman. |
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This is Joe Yankovich at his brother Bob's wedding around 1995.
MacKay Pipe Band used practice in the local Moose Lodge. Most of us were in high school then and we were all minors, so the Mooses allowed us to practice there rent-free on the stipulation that we all became Mooses as soon as we were twenty-one. Joe was the only one of us who turned twenty-one then. If I ever get my hands on the pictures of that evening, I'll post them here - the only real part that I remember is driving him home, and having to stop at a pay phone along the way so he could call his girlfriend. I think I heard him say he left his underwear in the phone booth, but I really didn't want to know. |
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Pete is also the fucking man.
More about this excellent worthy at another time. That's Drew Snyder on the left -- here he is again! |
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MacKay currently has the Most Excellent Drew Snyder as its pipe major.
Drew and I both did quite a bit together; most of it coincidentally.
Besides both being in Liberty's Pipe Corps together, we both toured
Europe with a jazz band/choir group (I was in the band, he was in
the choir), and we also lived together in college for a year.
Drew's one hell of a good guy. Here he is at Bob's wedding -- and I'm DYING to know what happened to the dude behind him. |
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Bob was my very first Pipe Major ever.
My favorite quote: "By the way, we're playing a concert tonight." So that's Bob and Missy, with Chris playing there in the foreground. |
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Don't adjust your monitor.
This is my favorite tune. Can you hear it? |
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Finally, we have Lee Lightle.
It was in this car that Lee would sleep whenever we went to Maine. Naturally, this encourages crankiness in the morning, particularly when one first awakens. So I woke up a little early one morning, I did, and I found my Pipe Major getting ready to drive somewhere. I went along. We were going, it turns out, to get coffee. A really large cup thereof. Just as we were pulling back into the campsite, we heard a very loud and very familiar sound: a breathless stream of invectives coming at paint-blistering volume from the driver's side of Lee's van. Lee had just woke up, and was cursing the loud-assed pipers who had awakened him. The Pipe Major's hand appeared from around the driver's side window. In his hand was Lee's morning coffee. Still cursing, Lee took the cup from Bob's hand. He paused mid-curse to take a long sip, smiled, sighed, and bellowed gleefully: "Goood morning, Robert!"
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