Straight Life by Art Pepper; Laurie Pepper Page B

and swinging around; by this time I was close to the bandstand and the people taking the tickets saw what was happening and rushed out. I was raging, "I used to play with this band!" I think I hollered, "Benny!" And he jumped off the stand and ran down there. The ushers were saying, "You've got to get out of here! Someone's gonna kill you!" Benny comes up to me and says, "Oh, man!" I said, "What is this? What kind of shit is this? I just wanted to say hello!" He said, "This is what I was talking about before. I thought you knew about these things." I was crying by this time. They despised me. They wanted to kill me. Benny said, "There's nothing I can do, man. Come around after. We'll see you outside, around by the bus." The ushers escorted me out.
I was going to wait to see the guys, but if I had gotten together with one of those black guys from inside I would have killed him or gotten killed. I left the place and found me a jug and drank it and wandered around the town. I was mad. I was really confused. I was hurt. And finally I got on the bus and went back to the post.
    I was drafted too late to get into a band. They needed people for combat, not for bands, but I had my horn sent to me anyway, at Camp Butner, so I could play. I was stationed right next to the 225th Army Ground Force Band, and when I realized that, I took out my horn and started practicing in my barracks, playing out the window so they could hear me. They ran over and just wigged out when I told them who I was. They had all heard of me because I'd been with Stan Kenton, and they started a campaign to get me into the band.
It was a difficult thing to do, but there was a warrant officer in charge of the band who played oboe and really dug me. He was a classical child prodigy from a wealthy family. I think he played with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He had blue eyes, blondish, curly hair, a pouting mouth and effeminate ways, delicate hands, long, slender fingers. He had a very refined manner of speaking and was brought up, I think, as a loner, like myself, only he was rich. He didn't really care for anyone else in the band, and he had found a friend in me; in fact, he was a little overly friendly and I always felt strange around him. He never made any sexual advances, but whenever I'd mention my wife or anything like that he'd get uncomfortable and change the subject. It's a thing I've run into lots of times, guys who liked me with almost a homosexual intensity but with no overt actions. This warrant officer had a lot of pull, and he kept working, and, finally, just before the outfit I was with went overseas, I got a transfer. That was right before the Battle of the Bulge, and most of the people in the outfit I was in were killed, but I got into the band.
When it was time for the baby to be born I got a furlough and went back to Los Angeles. Patti was living with my grandmother on Seventy-third Street. Her stomach was real big, and it was strange to feel the baby move. I was praying she'd have the baby before I had to go back, and just before I was supposed to leave she started getting labor pains close together. We took her to the hospital, and I sent a wire to the warrant officer requesting an extension. I got a wire back. He said if I came right away he'd guarantee we'd stay in the U.S., but if I didn't come back I'd be AWOL and I'd probably be transferred into another outfit and sent overseas. I had to leave Patti in the hospital.
When I got to the base there was a telegram waiting for me saying that the baby was born, a girl, six pounds, eight ounces. She was born January 5, 1945, the day after I left. I thought, "Well, anyway, I won't have to go overseas." But the reason the warrant officer had told me to hurry back was that the band was going overseas immediately and he wanted me to go with them. We were shipped to Camp Miles Standish in Massachusetts and loaded onto a boat in a convoy and sent to France.
    Everyone was scared. The war was raging. The trip was