For some years now, in Enumclaw (Native American name), a small town south of Seattle (named after a Native American chief), the Annual Pacific Northwest Scottish Highland Games and Clan Gathering is held. Prominent in the event is the Keith Highlanders Pipe Band.

In the late Fifties, I was involved in the East 42nd Street Arts Festivals, which were held in the University District, just adjacent to the University of Washington campus. The City of Seattle barricaded the streets in the area so they could be used for displays and performance stages. I was one of the several singers of folk songs who performed during these festivals. One afternoon, the Keith Highlanders Pipe Band put in an appearance, piping and drumming and precision marching up and down University Way. Stirring! Exciting! It got the blood of this great-grandson of an expatriate Scot coursing through my veins!

A couple of girls of my acquaintance got to giggling and speculating about the usual question:   what do they wear, if anything, under their kilts? One of them waited until a crucial moment as the pipe band came marching down the street, rushed out into the street, and lay down on her back. Without breaking step, the pipers deftly stepped over her. After they had passed, she got up and came back, wearing a smirk. When the other girls asked her, "What? What?" she just continued to smile enigmatically and refused to answer.

During the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, a lot of musicians, me included, found plenty of work. One of the pipers in the Keith pipe band started playing the pipes in a local tavern. It occurred to him that, under those circumstances, he should probably join the musician's union, the American Federation of Musicians. He went down to the offices of the Seattle local, and they just laughed at him. "Bagpipes? Don't be ridiculous!!" So he figured, "Well, okay, I asked and they said 'No.' If they don't want my dues, who am I to argue?" Then, when another official of the A. F. of M. dropped in to the tavern, he asked the piper for his union card. When he didn't have one, the official told him he'd have to join the union. A bit ticked off that when he'd applied, they blew him off as not being a musician, and now at the official's general rudeness, he told the guy to take a hike. The union threatened to close down the tavern. So he and the tavern owner wrote to Scotland and got a ruling.

The bagpipe, the ruling said, is not a musical instrument. It is a weapon of war.

All the union could do was sit and fume. They'd had their chance.

Don Firth