of a Singing Valentine crew by Reid Joyce |
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The wind was howling, the snow was swirling, and the dog looked at me like I was crazy when the alarm went off at 4:00 on the morning of Valentine's day, 1996. Do we make sacrifices for this hobby, or what? As usual for this annual Butler Notables fund-raising event, Hourglass was scheduled to deliver a bunch of singing Valentines all around the Pittsburgh area over the course of the day. Past years have seen us spending the day on a delivery-van tour of western Pennsylvania, but this year our day was going to start out with something more closely resembling a trip to the north pole on an icebreaker. But I digress. Joe was the first to arrive at my house, just before 5. As he shivered in, stomping the snow off his shoes, he mentioned that he'd had to take the back way in, because there was a truck stuck sideways in the snow on the hill just below my street. We wondered if Ron and Tom knew about the back way . . . if they didn't, we figured we might have to trudge down the hill in the deep snow and darkness to meet them. They found the detour and showed up a few minutes later. Joe and I piled in, and we all headed out on this year's Great Adventure. We picked up Lynda, Ron's fiancee-to-be, at her house, then slipped and slid our way down to Pittsburgh in the two-cell-phone-equipped mini-van that would be Mobile Valentine Central for the rest of the day. Our first official stop was at the Gateway Clipper dock at Station Square, where we met the other three members of Lynda's quartet (Balancing Act) and climbed aboard the large, comfortable Majestic party boat, for -- what else? -- a cruise! At 6:00 in the bloody morning! Not just any cruise, mind you, but one organized by Pittsburgh's Variety 96 FM station: a 2.5-hour cruise/broadcast to which 96 lucky couples had been invited to renew their wedding vows, pig out at the breakfast buffet, and be serenaded by Balancing Act and Hourglass. We ate and serenaded, and watched the icebergs slip quietly past as we churned up and down the dark waters of the mighty Ohio. We returned to the dock after two and a half hours of this back-breaking work on ol' man river, just about the time most of you sluggards were probably rolling out of the sack. We were met at the pier by Dave Crawley from KDKA-TV's "KD Country," and a Channel 2 camera man, also named Dave. Dave and Dave followed us around for the rest of the morning, capturing the whole range of human drama and emotion that's always evoked by frosty, frazzled, out-of-breath barbershoppers holding small teddy bears and big balloons. Dave number one ultimately put together a delightful video piece that aired on the 6-o'clock news that evening. We had to chase our first real victim down the halls of the Hilton hotel to deliver her Valentine. After we sang to the next lucky woman, a waitress in the restaurant on the first floor of the Gulf Building, we were collared by a businessman sitting at the counter. He admitted that he had realized -- when he was taking his morning shower -- that he'd completely forgotten to get anything Valentine-related for his wife. He pleaded with us to deliver one to her, in her office just across the street in the Koppers Building. He said we'd "really save his butt" (his words, not mine) if we could do this for him. The TV guys were really lapping up this human-interest stuff. We did it (sang for her, and saved his butt). A couple of stops later, as we stood waiting for an elevator, Dave and Dave were marveling over the intensity of the reactions of most of the Valentine recipients. As we talked, the woman to whom we had just sung came around the corner. She shyly approached, and said that the song we'd sung to her ("Let me call you sweetheart") had been her parents' favorite song. Although they passed away years ago, she said, the song had brought back many warm memories of them. She said she hadn't told us this story immediately after we sang to her, because she was afraid she'd get a little teary. Just for a second, there, I think I spotted a tear in hard-boiled Dave's eye (or maybe it was Dave's). The rest of the day went pretty much the same, except that after the camera crew left, we didn't have to worry about tripping over them every time we turned around. We sang for secretaries, nurses, doctors, and a little old lady with the flu. We sang in offices, stores, and a ritzy restaurant on Mount Washington. We did a highly modified version of "Let me call you sweetheart" for a little Italian-momma-bartender, in a biker bar loaded with big, long-haired, long-bearded guys with incomplete sets of teeth, who looked at us like they were either going to stomp us flat or make us drink beer to prove we're real men. Cheers. We also crushed a monster tag that's probably still ringing in the lobby of a big downtown office building -- and weren't even thrown out (like we were last year, from the USX Building)! Too bad it's so long between Valentine's days -- I'm ready to go again. |