 Hi, my name is Dan Cotter and I was one of those native players. My brother Pat and myself, well, I was the first and what they mentioned, the picnics. Well, the Fife and Drum and the Irish pipe band would play at all the picnics. And I'd get right behind each band because they'd play separate. And I'd pretend that I was part of the band. So I asked my dad one day, I want to join the band. Well, I didn't know if I wanted to be the Pipers or the Fife. I wanted the band. My dad remembers seeing Dan McCormick box in Buffalo, New York before my dad came to California in 1929, sort of 1930, something like that. So my dad was in the Plumbers Union as Dan McCormick was. So that's why I got this and not a pipe. They mentioned also the O'Neill brothers that came from Butte out west. Well, the O'Neill brothers were from Baltimore, Cork. And in 1932, they left the Pierce Connolly to join and form the San Francisco Irish pipe band. So the Irish pipe band was actually formed by people who left the Pierce Connolly. And if you look at the original pipe drum on the Pipers, it said old IRA because in order to be a member of the Irish Pipers, you were also a member of the IRA. The base drum over there came from Butte, Montana. There's also four snare drums, and I was always told that they also came from Butte. I may be wrong on that. I joined when I was nine in 1961. One of those pictures up there had my dad playing the cymbals. And before the McGoverns played the triangle, my uncle Dick played the triangle because he couldn't play the five either. There were 14 codders in the band at one time. The man carrying the American flag in one of those pictures was Jimmy McCarthy. There were six McCarthy's that were in the band at one time. And then the O'Leary's. Well, unfortunately, when a lot of us hit high school age, it was no longer cool in the 60s to play and dress with an orange tie and hat. All of the codders except four dropped out. All of the McCarthy's but one dropped out. The band has had its ups and downs throughout its history. Immigration would slow. Some of the people would get old and they would leave on. And a lot of times they would take their fives and not return them, keep sakes. So we kept having a purchase new in fives over the years. We used to have almost seven Irish picnics in this Bay Area. Now I don't believe there's any. A lot of it had to do with insurance costs and people just had other things to do. When I was first in the band, I joined in 61 right at the end of the parade season. So the first parade I ever marched in wasn't an Irish parade. It was the Chinese New Year's parade. We used to march Stumptown in Gurneyville. We played the Marines Hymn that year. And Gene McPeak figured we got the trophy because there was a general that was one of the judges and he liked the Marines Hymn. When I first started, it was almost, we would get a couple weeks off a year. Otherwise, we'd be practicing every Tuesday. I think there was a union meeting on Tuesdays back then. So after the union meeting, Dan would go to the KRB and we would go down there about 7.30 and we would stay till about 9 o'clock. With the start, you had the Chinese New Year's. That would be late January or early February. I'm not sure when it is now. Then you would have St. Patrick's several weeks. You would have Oakland used to have the parade on Saturday. San Francisco would have the parade on Sunday. So occasionally, we would march in Oakland as well as San Francisco. We also went down to Dublin, which in those days Dublin was, it was out there, you know. We had to almost take a bus to go to Dublin. It was so far away. After that, we would, or the day before, the week before that, we would go to Laguna Honda. Well, that was at night time. It wasn't in the day like it is today. And that would be maybe a four-hour showing. It was quite an ordeal back then. We would then go to the Little Sisters of the Poor. We would then have, after that, you had Easter. The week before Easter, we would march at Father York. Father York back then used to have three bands for Father York's. You had Pierce Conley, you had the Irish Pipers, and you had the city band. Father York was a priest from Galway County. And when he came to San Francisco, like the order said, the streets weren't paved with gold, and they weren't paved at all, and that the Irish were supposed to do the paving. And that's pretty much how it was. After that, you would start into the marching season. The Kerry Picnic would be the first, and that would be Memorial Weekend. Then you had the Cork Athletic Club would be in the 4th of July era. You had the Connett Picnic. You had the Ulster Picnic. You had the Dushan Picnic. And then you would wind up with the Corke Athletic, or Corke, Rebel Cork Picnic, would be the second Sunday in August. When they talked about, when old Dan talked about the picnics, and catching the ferry and everything, my mother used to say, the Rebel Cork Picnic in August was the biggest picnic in the area. They would take the ferry, and then they would take the train once they got over in Sausalito. And it used to be close to 10,000 to 15,000 at that picnic. That was at a time you didn't have TV, and you didn't have everything else. So you had to go to the picnic if you wanted to meet anybody. After that, you had the Veterans Parade that would come up in around September. So we were actually drilling and practicing almost 40 weeks a year. We would have a couple weeks off around Christmas. The first parade, like I said, was a Chinese parade. And I think it might have been the last time we marched in that one, because it rained so hard, and you can't play the fight very well in the rain. When I was in that parade, there were five kids. You had my brother, myself, the two McCarthy's, and the two Murphy's. And we were so far back that we couldn't see the bandmaster. We didn't have uniforms for the kids, because nobody expected kids to march. So we wore white shirts and a green tie, because orange ties were hard to find, and nobody had green shirts or sizes. So gradually, it became a mixture of adults and young boys. It was a senior and a junior. And we won parades. Like I said, in Guernville at the Stumptown, we won in Reno, Nevada, Dublin. The only place we never won was San Francisco. And the reason we didn't win in San Francisco is because they didn't know how to judge us. There was no other Fife and Drum Band. So they put us in with all the military bands. So we competed with the Presidio Band, Merrill Island Navy Band, and all the military bands, the Marine Corps Band. And even though we practiced as often as we did, it's tough beating a professional band player. So I was accused one time of not knowing when to stop talking. Somebody said, I didn't kiss the Blarney Stone. I took a bite out of it. But again, going back with Ed said, your dad catered my wedding. He catered my dad's funeral. He catered my mother's funeral. And he catered two of my cousin's weddings. So it was more than just being a band. It was camaraderie, almost a family type of thing. Back then, there were a lot of girls and women couldn't do certain things. So a lot of the auxiliary units, they had, you don't see them very much anymore, but they had drill teams. And a lot of the sisters and mothers were in these drill teams, these marching units. And wherever the band went, you always saw these various drill teams. So we, like I said, had its ups and downs. We lost three of the O'Leary's to the Pipers. They were always seeming to rob the Pierce Connolly for talent. One year, and I'm not sure which year, it was around late 70s. It was around when Northern Aid first came about. And a lot of the people marched with Northern Aid. So there wasn't any Fifers left. So my brother Pat and I were the Fife and Drum Band that one year. And since then, it's grown again. I remember when there had to be close to 50 or 60 in it. There were so many that Mary's dad actually, they didn't have, they didn't need him in the Fife unit. So he carried the swords. He and another fellow carried the swords as an honor guard. I mean, that we had so many at one time. And it's, you know, for any organization to last 100 years, it's a testimony of some of the people that have kept it going, kept the flame alive. I'm not sure if I'm running out of material or. Oh. Sorry. OK.