Callicoon Center, N.Y.
James Newton led the Callicoon Center Band in its performance on Wednesday. The band has entertained townspeople since 1934.
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Valerie McShane, left, playing a form of the bells, and her sister Agnes Tilson, playing spoons, always set up first on the bandstand.
Nancy Matrafailo, left, and Chris Whitmore broke into a polka dance on Wednesday night.
AGNES TILSON, spoon player extraordinaire, and her sister Valerie McShane, on the bells, always set up first, left front corner, on the old wooden bandstand at Main Street and Anawanda Lake Road.
The donations are always collected in four old cigar boxes. The winners of the pie raffle are always announced during the brief intermission. The program always begins and ends with Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol.” The concert always starts at 8. It always ends at 9. If revelers lose control and start dancing on Main Street, you’re safe to assume a polka has been committed.
The brook babbles behind the stage. The trees tower overhead. And the Callicoon Center Band always gives the faithful precisely what they come for, just as it has every summer Wednesday night since 1934.
Summer is a time when people’s sense of time gets a little unhinged. But there aren’t many time warps quite like the one that materializes and then disappears every summer Wednesday night in this tiny Catskill hideaway like something from Rod Serling’s imagination.
It’s not that nothing changes in this hamlet of 270 or so, where the town sign reads, “Home of the Callicoon Center Band.”
They had to add four feet to the bandstand a few years back because the band, now about 50 players, got too large to fit. People pass on, like the tuba player Paul Marks, to whom this season is dedicated, or Allan Sommer, who died in 2002 after 60 years as band member, more than 40 of those years as president. Sometimes, familiar faces can’t make it, like Ludwig Graner, who never missed a concert for 44 years, collecting donations every Wednesday night, until he had a heart attack last summer. Every five years or so, Dame Tilson wears out her instrument and needs to get a new pair of serving spoons to play.
Still, it would be safe to say that continuity is the order of the day, more than radical change. So with the faithful ensconced in folding lawn chairs on both sides of Main Street, James Newton, only the second conductor in the band’s history, took a hurried look at his watch as 8 approached. “I have to get going or they’ll get unruly,’’ he said. He then rushed to the bandstand, and the festivities commenced.
First came “American Patrol” (excerpted version) and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” played at the start of each concert, then a program selected from songs the band has played for decades, including “Liberty Bell,” “Shine on Harvest Moon,” “Beer Barrel Polka,” “Stardust,” “Matrosen bitten zum Tanz,” finishing with the full bells-and-whistles “American Patrol.”
The band members, wearing white tops and black pants or skirts, range in age from 13 to 86. They include music teachers from across the region and range from hobbyists to accomplished professionals. There are two three-generation families: Lee Siegel, his son Gary and grandson Max; and Bob Smith, his son Gordon and grandson Paul. Chuck Sommer — who has a doctorate in trumpet performance and has been playing in the band since 1969, when he was 13 — is the son of the longtime president Allan Sommer. The younger members aren’t likely to drive home with Sousa marches in their CD players, but they appreciate the experience nonetheless.
“It’s definitely not the music I’ll listen to on my own, but it’s a lot of fun. You learn a lot, and I definitely don’t feel like I’m buried alive with a bunch of old fogies,’’ said John Powers, a 16-year-old whiz on alto sax, whose tastes run to folk and bluegrass. “You settle right into it, and I like being able to make music with guys who are 77, guys who are 40 and people my own age.”
AS for the audience, the standard outer edge of musical taste tends toward “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” but the 300 or so on hand include most ages and sizes.
“We’re here every Wednesday, rain or shine,’’ said Lorraine Comfort, her pink neck brace one concession to time’s wear and tear. “You never get tired of it. I just wish we got to sing along more. Last week the conductor had us sing along with ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart.’ I wish he did that more often.”
It hasn’t been the easiest summer in Sullivan County. Almost everyone knows someone devastated by the flooding in late June. For the first time in memory, one of the 10 scheduled concerts had to be canceled because so many roads were closed.
As for the messy world beyond, if only the catastrophic flooding along the rivers of the Northeast were the summer’s worst news.
Still, for a night under the stars you could forget. Chuck Sommer did a spirited solo on “Bill Bailey.” The donations filled all four cigar boxes. When the band broke into “Beer Barrel Polka,” Nancy Matrafailo, who is the postmaster, and Chris Whitmore broke into a full-bore polka dance, heels flying off Main Street, that left both out of breath.
After almost everyone drove off, amid many warnings to watch out for deer on the dark roads, Mr. Newton lingered for a while, reminiscing on the bandstand, and then got ready to go.
“Will the last person leaving Callicoon Center please turn off the lights?’’ he said.
And he did.
