He’s a what?
It bustles with energy, this Music Man Museum in Mason City, Iowa. The corridor jumps to life with a full-sized reconstruction of “River City” from the 1962 Warner Brothers film The Music Man and the whole place is filled with kids. Some are touring the museum with their families. But others are there because, well, this is where they take their lessons.
And he sells clarinets
To the kids in the town
That’s right. Lessons. The entire center was planned to ensure the most important task of a museum: keeping the legacy alive. Preservation, if you will, but not preservation in a dry sense. Preservation that brings new life to a valuable heritage. So, while the interior looks like 1912, the visionaries designing this museum made sure it would engage the modern world.
But it’s different than it was
No it ain’t, no it ain’t
Out on the square you first greet the life-sized statue of an ebullient Meredith Willson. Across the top of its gleaming façade are carved the words to “76 Trombones,” so you can start singing before you cross the threshold.
With the big trombones
And the rat-a-tat drums
Open the door, and there’s another burst of energy. Across from the colorful 1912-style storefronts are two beautiful halls used for everything from wedding receptions to concerts. In the first one, we found kids busily engaged in a . . . cooking class. But why not? Learning is learning.
You can’t make a living
Selling big trombones, no sir.
Down the “street,” the business of making music was alive and well: a recently established branch of The New Horizons Band was holding an afternoon rehearsal in the second hall. The New Horizons Band, by the way, is a nationwide organization founded in the 1990s in Rochester, NY and dedicated to luring lapsed senior bandsmen back to playing music. In fact, a person can even start playing an instrument! These bands have cropped up in communities across America and are a perfect example of legacy in action!
With uniforms, too
With a shiny gold braid
If Meredith Willson still resided at his boyhood home next door, I’m sure he’d have been right there, sampling the kids’ cookies and waving the baton for the band, or at least snatching one of the 76 trombones off of the ceiling to show how it’s done.
Never worries ‘bout his line
Or a doggone thing
Meredith Willson is indeed the star of this museum, but he had a fascinating sister named Dixie. I’ll tell you about her in the next post.
Lyrics by Meredith Willson
Sounds like a good vacation stop . . . !