From The Land Of Sky Blue Waters
By Jim Ward
DCN Sept. 12, 1962 issue

Greetings once again From the Land of Sky Blue Waters. Right now we are in the process of relocating for the winter months. In the future our address will be St. Mary's College, Winona, Minnesota.

Now that the V.F.W. Nationals is past history the heads start turning toward Las Vegas and the Legion show in October. The junior contest shapes up as a fight between the Royal-Airs of Chicago and the Garfield Cadets. On the basis of what happened at the VFW show and several other contests during that week the Big Blue will probably be favored to put both national titles in Chicago. We haven't heard that any of the other Midwestern or Eastern powers are planning to take the Vegas jaunt, but this is understandable with the late date and the great distance.

It looks as if Hawthorne is all alone in the seniors again. We hear the Skyliners, Archer-Epler, and the Baltimore Yankee Rebels mentioned as possibles for the Legion contest but we'll wait and see which corps actually make it.

The Goldcoasters from Miami, third place in both nationals last year, have passed up the VFW show and will definitely be in Las Vegas as will the vastly improved Racine Boys of '76 and the Spirit of St. Louis. Our corps, the Hamm's Indians will also be on the scene as will the Laidlaw Toreadors of Minneapolis, marking the second straight year that both corps have attended the Legion Nationals.

As for the VFW show there was no doubt as to which two corps were the top ones in the show. The two corps from Chicago were head and shoulders above the Easterners that night. Bugles apparently made the difference with the Cavaliers topping the Royal-Airs by one point in total score, 88.20 to 87.20. The Big Blue showed very clean M&M and nice drums, while the Cavies bugles were great.

As for the other shows around the Midwest prior to and immediately after Nationals, they seemed to substantiate the results in Minneapolis. The Royal-Airs and the Cavies are very close, with the Green Machine pulling most of them out by tenths. Both corps were well above Garfield and the Cadets held a definite edge over Norwood Park. The Miami Vanguards surprised by knocking off some good corps around the Midwest. St. Joe's of Batavia also put on a good show at Racine before Nationals, taking high GE and M&M over Madison and the Kilties. The Skokie Vanguards and the St. Paul Scouts were big Midwestern disappointments. Skokie is way down from former years. St. Paul, after doing so well in July, was beaten by a corps which hadn't come within five points of them in July. The Scouts impressed quite a few people while they were in Seattle and seemingly put on a good show at the VFW prelims but failed to impress the judges. Drums are admittedly weak, but horns have been their strong point all year and it was horns that killed the Scouts at the Nationals.

On August 12 the Garfield Cadets defeated Madison to win their first Drum Beauty championship in four tries. Madison's fabulous horn line was not so fabulous that night in the eyes of the judges who placed the horns of the Miami Vanguards above those of the Scouts.

When the scores were announced Miami was in fifth place, 0.36 behind the St. Paul Scouts. However, they found a two point flag penalty, protested it and went out on the field after the show for the benefit of the judges, who then took away their flag penalty. We hope that this doesn't start a trend, for every corps which receives a penalty will go on the field after the show in an effort to show the judges how it really happened and contests will last about twice as long. Maybe this sort of thing is commonplace in Florida but we never saw a corps put on their drill twice for the same judges at the same show around here before.