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When I first started driving a bus in Bloomington Indiana in 1979 there was this guy, Leon Varjian, who was talked about by everybody. I never met him, but as a new arrival everyone had a favorite Varjian story to lay on me. How, after becoming Indiana University class president, he ran for mayor of Bloomington, promising (if elected) to change the local one way streets to run the opposite way. Or turn the downtown merchant square into a big Monopoly board. Leon moved his madcap act to the University of Wisconsin around 1978. One of the most interesting items in his luggage was a set of vintage marching band uniforms that he'd gotten from I.U.'s Marching Hundred when they upgraded to new uniforms. He had just the jackets, and the lapels and braid shouted out to amazed onlookers,"Oh yeah, we're from the 50's and damn proud of it!" Now, the inspired thing about the good Mr. Varjian, was that he was a master of satire. He'd have a collection of something and eventually he'd unleash it to public laughter. With the kitschy band uniforms it went thusly: Leon and thirty of his friends marched in a Madison parade decked out in yesteryear's uniforms playing Sousa marches as they went. Do not think that just by coincidence Leon knew 30 competent band musicians. Oh no, he knew 30 folks with boom boxes and they became the Boombox Marching Band. Varjian knew a local radio dj who'd agreed to play a steady diet of Sousa marches during the hours of the parade.The band tuned their "instruments" to the proper station, hoisted them to their shoulders and marched in time down the street. This is one of Leon Varjian's lesser stunts, it's not as famous as his statue of Liberty on the lake or his giant flock of flamingoes, but I like it for the innovative kitsch content. Plus I played in my high school marching band all four years; those were good times marching down the street to a gooving complex drumbeat, all of us happy, and in spats!
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