I think we all have our kettle "sea stories." I have one in particular and I'm not sure if I ever told it before on this site (maybe a few years back? I dunno. I can't remember.) but just in case I haven't this is probably the perfect occasion to do so.
On Dec. 11th 1968 I was playing 1st cornet from the old green Carolers Favorites tune book on my Eb Alto outside of Kresges at the Oakbrook Shopping Mall west of Chicago.
A businessman from NYC threw some money in the kettle and then stopped to tell me about the then world's largest kettle that he saw in Times Square. He told me that a large band was playing and men and women in uniform including "girls in those funny looking hats your women wear" were singing carols and getting passers-by to join in, and all about the great fun he had participating in it!
Since I was turning 18 in two weeks and leaving for the Navy in one month I decided to take my savings, hop on a plane and experience the world's largest kettle milieu for myself. (I was sort of an SA history buff and fanatic back then.)
I told my C.O. that evening on the way home what I was going to do and not to expect me to work the next day. He laughed and gave me a quarter to throw into the kettle for him. The next morning I left the house at 5:30 a.m. and went to the airport, telling only my grandmother about my trip (she too gave me a quarter!) and left my mother a note saying I'd be back that evening and why.
I'd never flown on a jet before and always wanted to see NYC so it was really exciting for me---but most of all I wanted to see that kettle!
By 12 noon I was in Manhattan's Times Square but never once saw any kettle, just the corps on West 49th Street. No one was there but I was impressed that the storefront corps really did look like it was right out of "Guys and Dolls!"
Anyway to make a long story short I took the subway down to 14th Street saw the Centennial Memorial Gates and NHQ and was finally told by an officer at the Trade Dept. on 15th Street that the world's largest kettle was outside of Macy's in Herald Square. Finally!
So I traipsed off to 34th Street and sure enough, THERE IT WAS! Unfortunately, there was a girl in her 20s standing next to it singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Silent Night" through her nose, totally oblivious to the fact that people were laughing at her as they passed by. I then threw my quarter, my C.O.'s quarter and my grandmother's quarter into the pot, smiled and asked her what corps she was from. She replied, "What's a corps?" Oh well, if nothing else, whatever welfare line they got her out of at least she wasn't standing there smoking a cigarette......
Daryl Lach
USA Central
P.S. Btw, the day wasn't a total loss. I bought a LP of the NYSB Male Chorus singing "You Must Go Home By the Way of the Cross", went to the observation deck on the top of the Empire State Building, and saw the Tree Lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center that evening before hailing a cab to LaGuardia. I was home that night by 10:45P and back at my kettle stand bright and early on the 13th!
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