Special Reports
Brookside bagpiper spreading ‘a little grace in these times’ of coronavirus lockdown
A bagpiper was practicing at his Brookside home recently when he got a knock on the door. It was the police, and someone had complained.
Fellow Brookside bagpiper John Tootle heard about the complaint, and it didn’t sit well. Tootle got on Nextdoor, a neighborhood social media platform, and posted a question: “So who wants to hear bagpipes during the early evening occasionally?”
He figured he would get a couple of responses and maybe a few smiles while playing on the corner during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.
Since the post on March 22, Tootle has received hundreds of replies ... and they’re still coming: “57th & Cherry please!” “73rd & Main would be fantastic!” “68th Terrace & Oak please” “Try to catch 58th and Charlotte on this run.” “We are at 59 and Brookside Blvd.” “We could all use a cup of good cheer!” ‘I would love it!” “Everyday! Sunnyside Park?”
And some even offered up commentary on the police call that started it all: “The crotchety old fools who called the police need ear plugs.” “Aye ... Let the pipes be calling!! Not to battle .... but to assist and support one another in the battle ahead!!”
Tootle, 60, a retired firefighter and paramedic who is studying to be a nurse, took up the bagpipes when he was 26. He did it for his father, who “loved the pipes and instilled that in me.”
Now he is bringing all those years of playing to this moment, when residents are looking for entertainment options while sheltering at home.
“The response has been overwhelming, and the response when I play has been overwhelming,” Tootle said. “I wanted to do it because of the times. We all need a lift.”
As a side job, Tootle has played more than 2,500 funerals, 250 weddings, birthday parties and in bars on St. Patrick’s Day. He did a 48-day bicycle trip from Seattle to Washington, D.C. — playing in the woods on the way with a final stop at the Washington Monument
This week he played outside the house of a hospice patient who had hours to live. The family opened the window, and the patient opened his eyes and gave a thumbs up.
On Wednesday, he played at a burial, then a 93rd birthday party in the Northland, then three Waldo and Brookside neighborhoods, then in the yard of a family who lost their young son a year ago.
Firemen never retire, Tootle said, so safety is always on his mind. He makes sure listeners are practicing social distancing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
He posts his schedule on Nextdoor: “I heard you playing tonight John - so lovely as I was raking.” “That was the highlight of our day.” “Let us know when and we will be there. 6 feet apart!”
Tootle is often in full uniform — kilt, Ghillie Brogues and thick hose, crisp white shirt, tie, black vest.
When he played in the University Academy neighborhood this week, children sat on the trunks of their parents’ cars safely parked in their driveways. Couples out for a stroll stopped and plopped down on the grass, and families at a nearby playground wandered down. Drivers did a double take, then waved or honked.
Tootle stood in the light of the setting sun. The heat had him taking a minute or two longer between songs, time he would fill by telling a tale or two, like when he was playing on a hot day at a Westport bar. Suddenly a cool breeze hit his knees. He was standing over the air conditioning duct.
“I didn’t want to leave. But with a skirt you don’t want too much of a breeze,” he said. With kilts having some weight, he said he wasn’t worried.
His twin sons, 16, had often asked him to practice in the garage or a cemetery, “or they roll their eyes,” he said. They have grown “marginally” more tolerant but show no interest in taking up the instrument. He hopes the seeds are planted.
“A little bagpipe goes a long way,” he said. “It sounds like someone strangling a sick cat.”
Tootle also is a caterer — whipping up appetizers such as grilled shrimp, beef on arugula with gorgonzola cream sauce, sliders and bruschetta with sirloin. He occasionally hauls trash for folks and other odd jobs to help people. So the neighborhood concerts are not something for him to do, they are something for him to share, he said. He closes each set with “Amazing Grace.”
“It is something everyone knows and everyone has comfort hearing,” he said. “Someone said we could all use a little grace in these times.”