Page 35 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

/J. Alter that he went to Starke as the Bradford County Band Director, and many years later after I had left
Lake Butler as the Director of the lake Butler band, Carl moved from Starke to Lake Butler and finished
out his band directing days with the band which I had started at Lake Butler.

Of all the people I have ever known I would have to rate Carl Roberts as being one of the top 3 or 4
most intelligent. 1 can remember one particular thing he told us boys on one occasion, which went
something like this: Everything changes, and nothing remains exactly the same. However you play
today, you will play a little bit differently tomorrow, either a little better or a little worse. If you practice
every day, then the next day you will play just a little bit better, although it might not be enough to
notice at first, but if you do not practice your instrument, you will play a little worse the next day. He
lh
urged us all to try to practice our instrument at home every day, and I vowed to do this. During the 6
grade, I told him that I would never skip a day practicing at home, and would try to practice at least 30
minutes every day.

I kept my promise and I did indeed practice at least 30 minutes every day, and would mark it on my
calendar so that in the event I had to skip a day for any reason, I would double up the next day and play
th
a full hour. Then, when I was in the 7 grade I changed my practicing procedure from a half hour per
day to an hour for every day, and again if there was some reason why I simply could not practice one
day, I would practice two hours the next. I kept this up every day of my life until after 1 had graduated
from Stetson University, except that I practiced more than an hour a day, and when 1 started working on
my Masters Degree at Baylor University I would practice my trumpet two hours before lunch, another 2
hours in the afternoon, and another 2 hours before 1 went to bed that night. 6 hours of trumpet practice
per day will certainly make that change that Carl Roberts talked about, and when the opportunity
knocked on my door for me to be able to play in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, I was ready.

Another thing I remember about Carl Roberts and his intellect, was that when I was in High School, he
told some of us boys that we might seriously consider studying electronics. Now we did not know what
electronics was. I guess we thought it was some kind of electricity, and I remember him predicting that
in later years that it might become possible that books would no longer be necessary because there
would be machines that contained all of the knowledge in the world and all you would do would be to
have to flip a switch to get any information you needed, and that was due to what he called electronics.
Naturally, he was really predicting the computer long before anybody ever heard the name computer.
That just goes to show how smart he was and if Carl had lived long enough he probably would have
been another Bill Gates.

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