September 4, 2006 – Spending the Day with the Scots

September 4, 2006 – Spending the Day with the Scots

IM and I drove over to visit our daughter MS, her husband GS and our grandkids ES and JS, in Pleasanton this Sunday morning just before noon. IM and I spent the afternoon with MS at the Scottish Highland Games running at the Alameda County Fair Grounds over the weekend. It was one of those perfect summer days in the East Bay, temperature in the mid 80s Fahrenheit, an on shore breeze blowing a cooling wind off San Francisco Bay over the East Bay hills and cooling the cloudless summer day to the point that it felt just the slightest bit chilling when sitting in the shade, where we spent the afternoon watching Scottish Highland Dancing, which concluded with the Sailor's Hornpipe. After the dancing concluded at around 4:00 PM, we walked over to the grandstand of the fairground's horse racing track where the last of the Highland Games were concluding. We watched men attired in kilts heft briefcase shape 175-lbs lead weights along a course that rounded a cone and reversed to a starting cone. The trek was repeated until their muscles and/or will gave out. The man who went the furthest before dropping his load won. The same competition followed for women who had to heft 85-lbs loads. There is something compelling and absorbing about watching someone straining every muscle in their body after all their strength has seemingly been exhausted to carry on beyond their limit. We were less than twelve feet from one end of their short track and we could see the exertion and determination in their expression as well as the disappointment and relief when they quit their pursuit. Watching their struggle was more compelling than who won or lost.

The Scots have been coming together in these gatherings longer than anyone can remember. In the Highlands, every year members of a clan would assemble to celebrate and strengthen bonds. The practice continued in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere in the British Empire when large numbers of clans were forced to emigrate from the highlands after the Battle of Culloden and legislation of 1746 that led to the destruction of the traditional clan system in Scotland. Many of the displaced arrived in Nova Scotia—the largest settlement of Gaelic speaking Scots outside of Great Britain, other parts of Canada, the United States—especially in the South, and Australia. A large number of Scots found their way to California during the Gold Rush. One newly arrived Scot was among the 48 members of the first State Convention in Monterey, California that drafted the first California Constitution on October 10, 1849. Formed in 1865, The Caledonian Club of San Francisco, sponsors of the Pleasanton Highland Games, started the first Highland Games, in 1866 and the tradition has continued to this day

The competition concluded at about 5:00 PM at which time nearly everyone at the fair began to converge on the grandstand and the macadam standing-room-only area in front of the grandstand that extended to the railing fencing in the racetrack, where we had taken up position. Everyone was awaiting the fair’s finale which concludes with massed pipe and drum bands from all over the Western states and Canada. The U.S. Marine Corp. band was also scheduled to perform. The program began with the large pipe and drum band from Los Angeles, winner of the band competition at the fair this year, marching in front of the grandstand to much applause and cheering. The song they were playing “Scotland the Brave” was what MS had been wanting to hear since she entered the fair. The sound of bagpipes and drums playing one of the most stirring melodies of Caledonia, made everyone assembled here Scottish and very proud of it. After ten minutes of play in front of the reviewing stand, the band marched off and the announcer with great fanfare introduced the 29 Palms U.S. Marine Corp. band massed on the dirt field of the racetrack to the left of where the three of us stood. Every man and woman of the ensemble was decked out in spit-shined shoes, white trousers, and ceremonial blue coat with anodized brass buttons running from waist to neck collar emblazoned with the USMC insignia.

With the introduction, the band struck up a march that after a few notes became the familiar sound of “Scotland the Brave,” an intro designed to please the audience. Moving past our position and reaching the reviewing stand, the band put on a show including an homage to New Orleans complete with the band reproducing a New Orleans jazz funeral. Various sections of the band—brass, woodwinds, tubas, and drums each took turns showing their virtuosity, ending with drums clowning and a couple of players loosing their sticks. At this moment the band master descend from his raise conducting stage, and assuming the strident authoritative voice of a drill instructor demand the screw-ups drop to the ground and deliver ten pushups, which they immediately do to great clamor from the audience all now engaged in the comedy going on before them. This over, the band reassembles and the announcer made known that the band would play music from Disney’s hit movie “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

When the Marine Corps band left the field, every pipe and drum band that had made the trip to Pleasanton to compete in band competition over the weekend massed on the field in front of the reviewing stand in preparation for one last performance before the Games officially came to an end. With one drum major leading and several other drum majors spaced in front of and along the ranks of assembled bands, the orders were given for all to begin play and we heard “Amazing Grace,” begun by a lone piper on the reviewing stand and accompanied by all those assembled on the field behind him. The Marine Corps band which had joined the assembled musicians, played a few more selections, including another Scottish standard “Auld Lang Syne." The band concluded by playing the anthems of each of the four military services, starting with the “Anchors Away,” then going to “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder,” followed by “The Caissons Go Rolling Along,” and concluding with “From the Halls of Montezuma.” As each anthem was played veterans from that branch of the service were asked to stand and be recognized by the assembled audience. The Scots have been recruited for military service ever since there was a Scotland and they’ve filled the ranks of Britain, France, the United States, and many other nations over the centuries and will continue to do so.

With the bands marching off the field the stands began to clear and the three of us started our walk out of the fairgrounds and back to the car and the ride home. I was getting hungry as I hadn’t had anything since a late breakfast this morning, while IM and MS had stood in a long line just after we arrived at the fairground to get their serving of fish and chips for IM and Bangers and chips for MS. On the way home we scored Pizza at the New York Pizza on Main Street in Pleasanton at its junction with Spring Street then rushed home to eat our dinner in the backyard on MS’s and GS’s place watching the last rays of the late summer sun drop in the Western sky lighting the darkness over Asia: the end of a memorable day.