Klarinet Archive - Posting 000350.txt from 1996/09

From: GREG BAKER <BAKERG01@-----.EDU>
Subj: Police Blotter
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 23:38:12 -0400

To those did not see it, this appeared is the July-August issue of "The
Clarinet":

POLICE RESPOND BUT CLARINET WASN'T LOADED
>From the Intelligence Record in Doyleston, Pennsylvania comes the following
item, written by reporter Darlene B. Waites:

It was 10:30 Wednesday morning when Warminster police were summoned to
the former Channel Home Center parking lot for a report of a man sitting in
parked car with a gun pointed at his mouth.
A woman shopping in the area saw the man and feared he was attempting
to commit suicide, police said.
Four police cruisers immediately drove to the lot at Streeet and
Jacksonville roads.
They saw the man's head and neck, and a dark cylindrical object pointed
toward his mouth, an officer said.
Police approached slowly on foot, them felt a sudden wave of relief.
The object pointed at the man's mouth wasn't a gun. It wasn't even a weapon.
The man was parked alone in the vacant parking lot, playing a clarinet.
But, from a distance, police said, the black mouthpiece of the musical
instrument looked like the barrel of a rifel.
Seeing police sorrounding his car surprised and upset the man, said the
officers, who had to explain why they were there. They didn't take the man's
name, they said, because he had done nothing wrong.
"But I'll bet he'll never play his clarinet in Warminster ever again,"
the officer said.

[Our thanks to Leon Lester, former bass clarinetist with the Philadelphia
Orchestra, for sharing this with us. Ed.]