Monday Memory: When Easter Weekend meant a Bus Trip to Drill Camp!
30 years ago this past weekend, the Bluecoats were coming off their 5th consecutive Easter Weekend Drill Camp. In 1990 the corps returned to 5th Regiment Armory in Baltimore, Maryland, where they had first come in 1986. The idea of “hitting the road” for a drill camp was something that (then) Director Ted Swaldo liked as a way to do a dry run on touring to get the kinks out six weeks before setting out on Summer Tour for real. In the first few years, the corps did standstill performances in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor tourist destination before hundreds of downtown spectators.
Ideal for learning drill, the Baltimore Armory sported a massive military “drill floor” that was about 90 yards long and over a full football field in width. Balcony level seating gave staff a much higher drill vantage point than typical scaffolding. Masking tape was used to line the field. The goal for drill camp was generally to learn the entire opener with music and movement. Sometimes even a bit more was learned.
On the Thursday night before Easter, the corps would leave Canton in the evening and travel throughout the night to Baltimore, catching a few hours of sleep on the “gym” floor just like a day on tour and eating breakfast out of the Chuck Truck. Friday and Saturday featured two full days of rehearsal and Sunday wrapped up at 4 pm when the corps hit the road for home.
The trip would be the first time the fleet, consisting of three buses, the Chuck Truck and Equipment Truck, would be run since Finals ended the previous season. The fourth bus during the off-season was dubbed the Pennsylvania Bus and would start in Harrisburg, PA and stop a few times on the way to Canton to pick up members. For the Baltimore Drill camp, the bus ran from Harrisburg to Baltimore and those lucky Pennsylvania Bus members were charged with lining the field that Thursday night.
Built in 1901, the Armory structure was an imposing site for a drum corps, but one that was unique and all-encompassing. The fleet of vehicles were able to park inside the armory in the massive basement, giving the corps a completely weather proof three day camp. Unlike some gyms with a tight fit, there was no shortage of space for overnighting on the main level floor. The showers left a little to the imagination and in a building of this age and construction had a few “bugs” to deal with too.
But drill camp was always met with high enthusiasm in the early days because it was a chance to hit the road again and feel like it was drum corps even though the calendar (and the weather) proved it wasn’t summer yet. Bluecoats would maintain an Easter Drill Camp all the way through the decade of the 1990s but would shift the location to a similar-sized space closer to home to the east of Cleveland.
