Bye-bye cornet

 The guy who wanted to buy the cornet said he'd call me, so after an hour's practice on the flute early this morning I went to bed, only to be woken up an hour or two later by the guy - he was coming over. 

So I put my bedding away and got dressed and he was here without having any trouble finding the place. He had his son with him. Both were hugely, massively ... fat. I think beyond obese, maybe morbidly obese? Their house had burned down, he said, and his son's cornet was melted into a sort of lump of metal. So his son needed a cornet and here one shows up on Craig's List. 

He looked it over and had a blow and let his son try it, and handed over two $100 bills. We talked about Hawaii and stuff, and he said how we went over in the 70s to the Big Island and it was all, "Haole Go Home!" until he said he was Portuguese then everything changed drastically. Thinking now, I was racking my brain over why there would be such a change, before realizing - it was their accents. Mainland accents. That would do it. 

I mentioned that I have a "really nice" trumpet I want to sell also, and he said, "Let me put this in the car and I'll take a look" and had trouble - "I can't walk" - walking back from the car right out front to the door here. I got the Xeno out, including the factory hard case. I tried a blow, thinking I'd impress him with some nice high C's but only made some miserable noises. Such a fickle instrument! He had a blow and liked it, "A lot easier than the cornet". I told him this model is considered very free-blowing and even tiring to play but that I'd not found it tiring, when I was out busking. 

He took down the model number, serial number, and so on and I said I'd get all the stuff for it together in one place because I was pretty sure I had a Schilke mouthpiece for it and a few other bits and pieces. So he took off and I dug around and found the Schilke and a bunch of corks and sent him an email telling him a list of what goes with it, and he's going to tell his band director "although, I'm tempted myself!". 

I'd told him although I was taking "big losses" on these horns, it makes it feel a lot better that they're going to be played in the San Jose Portuguese Band. I even know where the Portuguese Hall is now, it's right around the corner from Kumar's Island Market.