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Time for some fun
meet the Bend Fire Department's volunteer
pipe and drum band.
Well the group started
two years ago
formally when Justin Struhs
suggested we form a pipe and drum band
based on the fact that
a lot of other fire departments have them
and it's something that we're missing
here in Bend. Mike Baxter
and Billy Seaton were all
a top of the stairs at the E station one night and
we had just seen a
event where they were playing
the bagpipes on one of the computers and
I kinda threw it out there that we should do that
Mike will pretty much bite on anything so
he was like, OK and next thing you knew
there we were.
Now we're big into fundraisers and doing things for
other people and
this just goes along with that
I don't know why
we have so many people that like this type of
music but our department
are really into the history
of fire service and this
ties in with the history of the
American fire service. Been a lot
tougher than I imagined, I
thought it would be pretty easy, it only has
nine notes and I'm like how hard can that be
but it's definitely been tougher
but the fun, the fun factor
has been great - it's gotten a lot of us
together and got a lot of interest with
getting the drummers together and
all of us playing and now that it's all
come together, I think it's going to be
even more fun in the future.
The Celtic tradition goes back a couple hundred
years in the fire service.
to when a lot of Irish were taken
firefighting jobs -
they were the only ones they could get
to do it and it was pretty rough
way to make a living
and they brought with them
certain traditions
along with their Scottish tradition of
bagpipping and
they used that to celebrate
as well as to
mark those who had died in the line of duty.
The uniform has
many pieces, it has the
kilt and the sporen and
we're getting a button down black shirt
special shoes that go
with the uniform and also a hat
All the uniform costs
about $700 and
each person in the band is buying
their own uniform. The City
is not involved, the members are all paying for it out of
their own pocket - no department money goes toward
this. We
had some donations and the rest
has been on our own.
One of the first things we had to do when
we were looking at uniforms, we were
picking the plaid we wanted and
for our tartan on our kilt
so we looked at the
different tartans and we decided we wanted to
pick a tartan that had something to do with
the City and the history of Bend
so we picked the McKay
tartan and
Clyde McKay was one of the founding fathers
of the Bend Fire Department and
you pronounce it 'McKai'.
Well fire departments, they tend to help each other a
lot and we help each other
in times of fire, wildland fire
we'll go help each other out
cross borders, if you will,
and the same thing goes for the pipe bands.
We wanted to be able to have
our own services for our members
but it's just a lot of fun and
it's a lot of fun we didn't want to miss out on.
The enthusiasm that the members had was
outstanding, we had a big group of
people came out after we had initially
started playing
a few of the pipers started playing and we needed more members
especially drummers, had a great turnout
and they all
dwindled it down and we ended up with four
and hopefully there will be more
once we get going and people see how we play
how much fun it is. Not only do we
get together and practice but it's just fun
to be with people and
a lot of times we have to remind ourselves
why we're here and get back to practicing cause it's
we have so much fun
and playing in front of our friends
is a blast because they really enjoy it
Yeah, I'm having a blast
I love it, it's great
and so
fun to have music back in my life
and to be playing
with my brothers at the Fire Department, I couldn't
ask for anything better.