I was the classic city kid in a rural area. Iowa State College is literally in a corn field, and our ROTC there were the old French horse-drawn 75 millimeter artillery pieces. And there were six horse hitches to pull them, and so as ROTC students we had to take turns hitching up the horses and going out in a parade ground and stuff like that. And of course, the challenge was to be the first out on the parade ground. Well, there were, I don’t remember how many of us, per unit per artillery piece maybe there were four of us or eight of us, whatever it was, when he came my turn to hitch up the horses and get ready to go out in the parade ground. You can imagine that I was totally lost, I’d have trouble putting a saddle on a horse to ride it, and make sure that it didn’t turn around and slip off the side of the horse, much less figure out how to hitch up six horses to a hitch and get them out. The result was we were not only not first, we were always last when it was Fisher’s turn the hitch the team up. And I recall that after being in ROTC for one semester, I decided, “This is ridiculous, “I’m not gonna have anything to do “with the artillery and horses.” And I signed up for the trumpet and drum Corps, and I’m not a musician, but I thought, “Hell, I can beat a drum.” And I proceeded to march in the trumpet and drum Corps instead of the six horse hitches on the artillery field.
