I see that Fiesta San Antonio is now scheduled for November this year. The first time in its century-plus-decades history it hasn’t been in April, but such is our time. Social distancing isn’t the norm for Fiesta.

Yuriko and I went to a few Fiesta events in 2000, parking toddler Lilly with her grandmother for a few hours, but I remember my high school Fiestas better. Each year from 1976 to ’79, I was with the Alamo Heights HS marching band in the Battle of the Bands at Alamo Stadium and then — with one exception — the Battle of the Flowers parade downtown a few days later.

It’s officially called the Battle of Flowers Association Band Festival, but no one I knew called it that. It was the Battle of the Bands. High school bands from all over the metro area came to compete.

The best a band could do was score a 1 in music and 1 in marching. For decades, Alamo Heights had always scored two 1s — until sometime in the early ’70s, before I was in high school.

Since then, including my freshman, sophomore and junior years, the band had gotten a 1 and a 2. Very good, but not top.

So we were keen to score two 1s in the 1979 Battle of the Bands. I don’t remember what music we played or what steps we marched. All I remember was the announcement afterward: two 1s! The band exploded with joy.

I can remember only one other exuberant moment like that for the band: early junior year when, after two years of losses, the AHHS football team actually won a game, narrowly. The Battle of the Bands moment was better, though — we’d won that for ourselves.

That was a day or two before the ’79 Battle of Flowers parade — April 26, 1979 — that didn’t happen because of a wanker with a gun. Fortunately for us, at our staging area the band wasn’t close to the shooting. I didn’t even hear any shots, though at one moment heard the roar of a suddenly panicked crowd at a distance.

Even that day had its lighter moments. The parade cancelled, we in the band got back on our buses to leave. Just before we left, a non-band senior got on as well, someone most of us knew. Our band director asked him to leave, and the boy, who was chemically enhanced, got the opposite of belligerent.

“All right, all right,” he said in an almost sing-song voice, smiling and giggling. “I’m getting off now. Don’t worry, I getting off now!” (I’m re-constructing those words; but that was the gist.) It was a little puzzling then, but looking back on it, I think he’d done more to prepare for the parade than drink a little beer or smoke a joint. At that dour moment, he was having a good trip.