When I joined the band, practices were held at the Adult Rehabilitation Center. The Officer in Charge of the ARC also played Alto Horn in the band. Our practices were three hours long, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 noon. We would then have dinner just before the men came in to eat.

After a year or two of this, the horn player was transferred and a new ARC officer entered the picture. The first thing he did was decide that it just wasn't right that we would be eating the food provided for the men in the program so the band practice was moved to the Houston Temple Corps building. We had the same setup there. We practiced for three hours and then had lunch at the Corps building. The Salvation Army got it's money's worth out of this. Major Frierson's favorite quote was, "If it weren't for this band, nobody in Houston would even know the Salvation Army existed here." It was true, we played before the public at least 125 times the last year I was bandmaster. I would estimate that for every hour we spent in band practice, we spent two hours playing in public.