Stroud

     I think it was pink...maybe a pale pink. I suppose one could have said it was a blushed red but no matter what it was, it wasn't an organ and that's what we needed. preferably a Hammond B3 with an accompanying leslie speaker. All the heavy bands were using them...Vanilla Fudge, Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly etc. You get the idea. But Billy convinced us that he and his electric piano would be cool enough and because of his heightened powers of persuasion Billy Stroud became an Azurite and although The Azurites (named for a light blue chemical in David Miller's chemistry set) came and went after about a year (1967-1968), we enjoyed our short lived fame at Slidell Junior High as rock stars. It gave us all a taste of the power of music above and beyond the school marching band.

     To my best recollection Bill Stroud didn't exist for me until Junior High. Before that he was just a rumor instigated by the children of the many Texas transplants motivated by the great NASA migration in the early Sixties. Over time I and many others became familiar with his obsessions with ,among other things, Texas A&M, The Civil War, music and ,of course, the automotive oddity that was (is) the Corvair.  Throughout junior high and high school Bill was a major influence on the blossoming psyche of the group we called the Great Society. this was the name we dubbed ourselves and "borrowed" from a Texas politician LBJ. It reflected our desire to change the world around us. Ironically , I dare say that in today's world those same people would summarily reject those liberal leaning ideas but that's not really all that unusual. The idealism of youth often disappears with age and is replaced with an assimilation of what "has been" all along. But I digress.

    I don't remember what Bill Stroud's father did for a living but I suspect that he had previously graduated from Texas A&M with some sort of engineering degree and as a father passed those aspirations on to his son. I say this because it is no coincidence that Billy persuaded the school band to adopt the Texas Aggies cheer, "Gig 'Em, Tigers!" for our own use. "Gig 'Em"? Really?What does that even mean?  And while we're on the subject of nonsense, where did his fascination with the Corvair come from? I'm going to stop short of saying he was a Corvair but I think he identified with the uniqueness of the design. The Corvair featured an air cooled engine in the trunk and that was unique but with this design also came a bad reputation that centered around its instability when making sharp turns or corrections. The Corvair itself became a symbol of poor engineering until a research project at Texas A&M provided test data that disproved that notion. This project was initiated in 1972 I believe , shortly after Bill Stroud began his college career there. Coincidence? Probably, but not emphatically. I never got the chance to ask him. We lost touch after high school, but there is a joke I'm sure he stole from somewhere that helps me remember his sense of humor and the drive he felt to prove himself. On a certain occasion someone made a disparaging remark about the size of his shoes and his size in general and Billy countered with the clever quip, " You need a bigger foundation for a church than an outhouse."

There is no question that Billy influenced the group think within our social group and further in the school band. Bill participated in countless school band functions, Red McIntire's swing band, and early on the yearbook staff.  I suspect that teachers and band directors too spent many days rationalizing their admiration and frustration over Bill Stroud. I can still hear the echo of Mr. White screaming at the top of his lungs at the rebellious lower brass section  improvising parts led by Bill and still later seeing Mr. White glow with pride as Billy was named student conductor of the band.  He was smart and clever, deceptively charming and a major instigator of mischief. Ask Bruce Clement how his Fiat wound up in the interior hallway of the band room at SHS during lunch hour. I think it was a Fiat. It may have been some other wind up clown car contraption but it was a car nonetheless brought inside the building. That demonstrates knowledge, problem solving, planning ahead and resourcefulness all at once. Today we call those things leadership qualities. Back then I'm pretty sure we called it criminal mischief. 

    If I were to attempt to describe Billy Stroud at age 16-17, I would compare him to Andy Hardy, Mickey Rooney's movie persona from an era that precedes our teenage years mixed in with a little Ferris Bueller from our way post teenage years. Both showed ingenuity in a pinch and a penchant for recruiting help in the performance of the crime... I mean task.

   As I said my friendship with Bill ended after high school but I had a colorful history with him in those days. I'm not sure what Billy would say about our friendship during those years but I would call it something on the order of benevolent adversaries almost from the beginning. We shared many of the same interests and unfortunately wanted many of the same things... and people. I will leave it at that. Explain friendship and romance to a 14 year old. I'll give you a moment. The summer of '68  provided me with a lesson in love and friendship and that lesson was given to me at my own birthday party hosted by Billy Stroud on Apple Pie Ridge Road.         To be clear, it was a great party. All my friends were there including my love interest at the time. The music was perfect and  the gifts were generous. A very nice pool party. I am amazed that I still have two massive birthday cards signed by everyone in attendance on that day. But eventually with the party winding down my girlfriend at the time decided to break up with me as we stood alone outside by the pool. As an adult I suppose I can liken the feeling to going to Disneyland and then finding out your parents are getting a divorce when you get home. One negates the other. The last time I can remember being at Billy's house was months later at the beginning of our first year at Slidell High to work together on a Biology project for the BSCS Pond Study. On the very same electric piano of Azurite fame, Bill and I composed the haunting Biology ballad, "What's It All About, Algae?"  My question is, can you ever really know?

    Finally, I want to finish my walk down memory lane with a short account of what I think is one of Billy's finest moments as a teenager in training. I never pictured Billy Stroud as a particularly romantic guy. Funny, yes?  Intelligent, certainly? And I know just like the rest of us, he passed notes in class often to the dismay of our teachers. In those days note passing was how we kept up to date with all the school drama. In that first year at Slidell High Bill Stroud went that extra mile and wrote ,what I heard through the grapevine, was an honest- to- God love letter to the girl he loved. It wasn't a funny note, it wasn't a whimsical expression of interest. It was a mature, heartfelt confession of love. Now I can tell you as a musician and a romantic who sang many a love song about generic affection , it never occurred to me to try that myself. At the time I remember thinking how sappy it was to "write a letter" of that magnitude that would certainly end in humiliation for him. But that's not how it went down. By all accounts this literary masterpiece melted her heart like a candy bar on a hot summer sidewalk. I don't really want to know the actual contents of that letter from over fifty years ago. It was probably not as eloquent as I imagine. The outcome speaks for itself.

   My last conversation with Bill was at a class reunion a few year ago. He entered the room sporting what looked to be a colonel's hat or more accurately a riverboat gambler's hat and he was walking with the assistance of a cane but not relying on it too much. He brought me up to speed on his life telling me about his wife, his kids and his engineering firm. He told me he had seen the YouTube tribute to The Azurites and we had a good laugh at that. He said he was glad to be able to prove he was a junior high rock god to his grandkids. My eventual conversation with him was not very long but of course we touched upon old relationships from days gone by and he quietly confided to me that "she was a hard one to get over." I knew exactly what he meant because ,as I said earlier, we both often wanted the same things.