On our wall at home we have an engraving of an old fable – "the Blind Men and the Elephant." One man holds the trunk, another a leg. A third man stretches both hands out to touch the animals broad rough side and a fourth holds the tail. What each man perceives of the elephant is vey different. Our tail holder thinks he's got a rope. The man at his side feels a wall. The leg man feels a tree. The man at the trunk thinks he has a snake. They each come away thinking they know what they've encountered. They can't see that they're wrong, that their story is incomplete. The truth is, only together can they create the whole picture of what they have before them.
With that old fable in mind, I started piecing together my Dad's story. I sent out an announcement through my dad's rarely used Facebook page and my own Facebook page. I made phone calls and sent emails. I connected with dad's old school friends - a really wonderful group of men with a strong network. I had such fun talking with them. They gave me glimpses into my dad – in ancient times really – before I even existed. He had a whole life then – 26 years of life before I came around.
Sadly, those who knew him in his earliest days are all gone. I have birth dates, albums of pictures and some stories he told me, to help me retell of his very Scottish childhood. With 2 parents who played and taught the bagpipes and a Mother who taught highland dancing, his Scottishness was omnipresent in his upbringing. He and his sister were both proficient dancers, winning dozens and dozens of medals from their many, many competitions. In those days, you wore your medals as you danced. I remember watching the dancers, in the hot summer sun, in their heavy woolen kilts, thick argyle socks and black velvet jackets, hearing ca-ching, ca-ching with every step. It was beautiful and inspiring to see but it also seemed very hot and heavy. My dad's dad, also Angus MacDonald, immigrated here to the USA when he was 21. He died when I was just 10, but I remember his thick Scottish brogue. When my dad was a kid, he and his dad (Janice and I called him Papa) went fishing from time to time. I remember my dad trying to teach me how to say it like Papa did. "We'rrrre going to go get some Worrrrrms." I'd try and try, but I never got that RRRR, right. Dad could do it of course. We never heard him use that talent otherwise. Who wanted to hear a Scottish accent in those days? But it was his birthright.
Like his Mom and Dad, Dad learned to play the bagpipes and got to be quite good. A well reputed private school, Northwestern Military and Naval Academy in Lake Geneva had a military band that featured bagpipes. Go figure. Dad's talents as a piper combined with my grandmother driving all that way from Chicago to teach, got him a scholarship and that's where he spent his teen years. Most of my childhood, he'd never said a good thing about his time at Northwestern. The nicest thing I remember him saying was that his parents "thought they were doing what was best." It was a good school with a tremendous reputation after all. He was not a military minded guy, my dad, so what they did there – the hazing, the strict discipline – much of it rubbed him the wrong way. He told me with distaste that he never participated in the hazing. Only much later in 1996 when he went to his 50 year reunion, did he come to look back at his years a NMNA with any fondness. He had such a great time at that reunion, reconnected with some old classmates and kept in touch through the years after. In talking to these sweet men, I learned that most of his classmates had similar ambivalence about their alma mater and I got some terrific stories of my dad's teenage years.
Several talked of his piping as they all paraded around the school grounds. Music always makes the march more pleasant. According to classmate Ed Siebel:
Angus was a leader of the Field Music at Northwestern Military & Naval Academy and I knew him as a class mate, though we were in competing companies. I well remember him wailing on the bagpipes as we marched around the parade ground.
One told of his surprising grace as a dancer. Dad always struggled with his weight, but he was at his chunkiest his first years at NMNA. Thomas Kruse (not the actor) said this:
I went to NMNA with Angus. I started as a junior and he was a senior so only acquainted for a year. Angus was well respected and highly thought of. The field music was such a part of our every day lives. I still think of his piping quite frequently. Angus was certainly not skinny and I was amazed when he performed the sword dance. It was marvelous.
Here's one of my favorite stories, from classmate Bob Mack:
Angus and His Gift of Three Tunes
My name is Bob, but there were lots of Bobs that Angus gifted. In 1954 my single mother was finding it difficult to keep an eye on me and to provide for life’s essentials when she heard of Northwestern Military and Naval Academy. I was sent to the Lake Geneva academy and was informed that the school would provide a scholarship if I, a son of Polish-English parents, played the bagpipes with the academy’s band. Despite my lack of a musical gift, Angus persisted on a daily basis and eventually by the end of nine months I played three tunes and could drone through the longest of parades. Unfortunately, he never shared the ‘Bunny Hop’ with me which he reserved for Academy dances. The three tunes were sufficient for me to retain the scholarship for the final three years of high school. Those three years on scholarship prepared me for college. Angus’ Gift of Three Tunes started me on a path of personal and professional fulfillment. There were a number of us ‘ungifted’ students who played in that rag-tailed band because Angus shared his gift. He did his best with that which he was given. Angus, save a place for me in your Big Band Above.
Bob, NMNA ‘57
They had a sailing and a flight program at the school and I found that a couple of his old classmates are also sailors, one even joined the Navy, and one became a professional pilot. Some say that our adult personality is formed in these teen years and that may be true. We all know that dad rekindled his interest in flying and sailing after his kids were finally completely out of the nest.
After the academy he did a year of college and met my mom. They got married had Janice and later (and more importantly) me. He worked at CNA, the insurance company in Chicago where he made some lifelong friends. I was lucky enough to get some more stories from his CNA buddies. He met Ed Bapple there. Ed sent a nice story, he said:
I first met Angus when we were coworkers at CNA in Chicago, sometime around 1970. There was a restaurant/bar on the ground floor of our building called the Bowl and Bottle. I can't recall anyone actually eating there but we certainly availed ourselves of the bar. We would gather there, particularly on Friday nights, and consume as much beer as our meager salaries would permit. There was much talk, laughter and trashing of management. Angus was always popular because he was a fun person to be around. Angus didn't always subscribe to conventional ways. Therefore, it was always interesting to get his viewpoint. As an example, I recall Angus telling us that he was buying some property. Since it was going to be a week or two before the closing he needed to park his down payment somewhere until he needed it. Now the average person would put it in their savings account. Angus said that he was buying some stock, which he said would provide a better return. Myself and others kept pointing out that stock has been known to lose value. Angus just laughed and brushed us off. Ultimately, he was right. To this day, I don't know if he was lucky or perhaps he knew something that we did not. We started a chess club at CNA and Angus was an enthusiastic member. We also put together a team to play against the other companies in the area. Angus showed up every week at the club and participated in team play. This did generate some funny stories but unfortunately they don't mean much if you don't play chess. I can sum it up by saying that we labored hard to make Angus a serious chess player but in the end he succeeded in teaching _us_ that "If it's not fun, what's the point".
I remember him teaching me chess. We'd play once in a while when I was 8, 9, 10 and he'd coach me through the whole game. Once in a while I'd win and I'd get so pumped, "I am the chess master!" I'd forget that my opponent was also my coach. Maybe, just maybe, he let me win. His pal Frank said, We shared a lot of good times going to hear bands at a lot of Chicago places that had regular jazz groups, mostly in "old town" and the Lincoln Park area. We also shared a love of exotic eating in Phillipine, Vietnamese and other far-east restaurants. Andies jazz club was a favorite. I remember going there with him once when I was in college. Larry Combs, then principal clarinetist in the CSO was playing and Dad thought I would have fun. I've never been a clubber but it was a good night. Larry Combs is an excellent clarinetist, but not so much a jazz player. Dad talked of Holstein's too, the folk club up in Lincoln Park, which became one of my favorite college haunts. I'm sure the Scottish influence was what started him in his love for folk music. That's the style of music he'd sing and play himself. He liked all genres of American, Scotch and even Irish music and folk rock too. Like me, he loved those few years when the whole family would get together and jam. We learned new instruments, grabbed guitars, harmonicas, dancing wooden men on sticks, even spoons. Anything you could make noise with was welcome. He was happy to show you what he knew. He sat at the heart of things then, his guitar in his lap, singing loud and strong. I loved those times too. I still have the songbook! Yes, purple mimeographed pages and all.
Even earlier in my memory is the image of him singing and strumming on his old Martin double O guitar – Froggy Went a Courtin' was my favorite. Janice, Dad and I sat on the bed and I listened rapt to his husky voice and watched his fingers make those strings dance. He rarely got out the bagpipes but it was always fun and a bit house rattling when he did. He left the pipes sitting in their case long enough that he had a lot of prep work to do. He'd lovingly condition the bag with some concoction involving molasses. Once he showed me how the pieces fit together, how string wrapped around the ends to keep the wooden pipes fit tight into the bag. Nowadays, I suppose they use cork, like they do on on other instruments. He let me learn some tunes on the chanter, showed me how all the notes in a tune were separated by doublings and triplings – little grace notes. (With a bag full of air between you and your fingers, you can't articulate with your tongue.)
And the food. How he loved the food – especially travel through food. He'd say, "Lets go to India" or "Let's go to China." The middle East, the far east, Mexico – the spicier the better. If it didn't make your nose run and your eyes water, what good was it? And travel. He dreamed of travel to faraway places or to his ancestral homeland. Of sailing trips, of motorcycle trips, he even once planned on driving a school bus down to central America. Most of these trips never happened. It's always more fun with a companion and very few were interested in his unconventional schemes, but we got lots of local travel in. He'd host us on short sails on Lake Michigan, trips to the Air Show in Oshkosh. He sailed up to Mackinac a few year ago. And in 2006, we had our family trip to the British Virgin Islands, fulfilling one of his lifelong dreams and having a blast in the process.
So there you have it. A few more pieces of the puzzle that was Angus. Maybe the elephant has a leg or two and a trunk now. I hope that you will join us in filling in the gaps in our story, so that we can step back and see the whole picture of my dad, a quiet man, full of dreams and ideas, with a lot of love in his heart and music in his soul.
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