Tiger Band Trumpet Section: Keeper of the Fish

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Can you guys explain what this means to the uneducated like myself.

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Those of you guessing our initials are correct. It was me (Graham Breedlove) and Nathan Goebel who first brought the fish to practice. It didn't come from a dumpster in Tuscaloosa, it didn't come from a piece of driftwood on the beach at a bowl trip, and it sure as hell didn't come from the 1970's. It came from Baker Boat & Motors up near the BR Zoo (I think its closed now). Nate's brother & sister in law (Tom & Mary) owned the shop, and Nate and I worked there summers and weekends to support our drink shitty beer and I'll-buy-that-mouthpiece habits. The shop was a cultural center for pretty much every redneck in the BR metro area, whether he owned a boat or not. One of the regulars gave the fish to Tom & Mary as a "tip" after a boat repair. He thought it was a beautiful work of art that would look great in Mary's office. He said something about his cousin making it with a chain saw. It sat on the floor for months until Mary finally told us to get rid of that Ridiculous Piece of shite immediately. [Side note: want something to disappear? Find yourself two drunken trumpet players. Poof.] So we loaded it into the back of Nate's 69 Dodge Coronet (I think he paid $200 for the car in 1989) and it sat there for months. In one drunken stroke of genius we thought it would be the funniest thing in the universe if we brought it to practice. What the hell else do you do with a 5 foot fish? And we were drunk. The next day before practice Nate climbed the tower and stuck the fish in Frank Wickes's spot, and it sat there staring down at us for a good 10-15 minutes before one of the GAs freaked. He told Nate to move it. Nate said it was mine. He asked me to move it. I said it belonged to Nate and he doesn't like people touching it. So the GA climbs the tower hoping to move it before FBW shows up. Just as he's climbing down FBW arrives, and stands there watching him come down the tower with a 5 foot fish. I don't know what the GA said to FBW to explain the big arse wooden fish under his arm, but the look on FBW's face was one of the funniest I've ever seen. Nate stuck the fish in the ground next to his spot during warmups, and we pretty much brought it to every practice after that. The only couple of times we didn't bring it is if we lost Nate's car. This happened at least twice that I remember, usually on Friday nights before home games, then Nate would have to ride his shitty garage sale Napoleon Dynamite 10 speed to practice. At the end of the season we put a gold bow tie on it and brought it to the banquet, and some time during the night decided it would be cool if the whole section signed the back of it. This would've been the fall of 1989, our sophomore year. It lived in my apartment until the next season, and then I can't remember where it went from there. We never had an official Keeper of the Fish title, but I guess that's because we were the Fathers of the Fish.

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The young man who relieved you of the fish is the son of a good friend of mine. His dad and I partied hard when I was in Tiger Band.

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