‘Once you get the band in your blood, it never leaves.’

“Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun,

with 110 cornets right behind. . . . “

--”Seventy-Six Trombones”

from the musical “The Music Man”

There was only one trombone, no cornets, and tomorrow morning’s sun was out of sight over Mongolia somewhere as about 35 band members marched around the track in the John Burroughs High School stadium in Burbank.

The wet grass of the empty football field glistened under the floodlights. The moisture in the air occasionally thickened to a brief drizzle. Puffs of exhaled breath condensed in the cold.

Around and around the quarter-mile track tramped the little band, pumping out “On Wisconsin” and trailing a handful of joggers past the deserted bleachers. Two high-stepping baton twirlers led them jauntily through the lonely mist.

Passing under the harsh lights, one of the twirlers showed a touch of gray in her hair.

Members of the Burbank-Burroughs High School Alumni Marching Band are not high school students, at least not externally. Some have grown children of their own.

The American fascination with adolescence has been a popular subject for movies lately--films like “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “The Best of Times”--films that ask: What if an adult could go back to high school? Maybe do it right this time? Play the big game over and this time be a star? Or reclaim the glory of the last time you wowed them all, just before the adult world booted you into the pack with the also-rans?

In Burbank, there are those who have gone back.

Alumni of John Burroughs and Burbank High schools, traditional rivals, in 1986 began replaying the football contest that was always The Big Game for them. Alumni players of any age were eligible, with lean, recent grads joining graying vets of the Eisenhower era on the field.

Where there are football players, there are cheerleaders and marching bands. The piccolo players of the 1970s and the pompon queens of the 1960s rummaged in the attic for the old gear.

It was decided this year to play the football game every other year to avoid overexposure, said band director Bill Kuzma, assistant principal at Jordan Junior High School. Although the joke in Burbank, he noted, is “that it takes the players two years to recover.”

But the band, alumni of both schools, meanwhile had begun appearing in the annual Burbank On Parade, a very down-home Burbank event, with assorted high school drill teams, equestrians, odds and ends on trucks, any unusual vehicles that can be found and apprentice celebrities from Burbank’s TV show factories.

The band had come together on this dismal night to practice for their only appearance this year.

“Hi, Kathy,” a bearded tuba player said as the band practiced marking time in place. “I can’t believe this. I haven’t done this in 15 years.”

“Mike, it’s 17. I counted.”

“Quiet. I’m trying to delude myself.”

The musicians were bundled in jeans and outer wear from old military-issue jackets to ankle-length overcoats. The baton twirlers wore fleecy sweat suits and baggy jackets instead of tiny skirts.

The tiny skirt would come out for the real thing on Saturday, said baton twirler Dianne Merritt Oberlin, 39, Burroughs class of ‘67, who married her high school sweetheart and has four children, including daughters with no interest in baton twirling.

“The exhibitionism is fun,” she laughed.

“Once you get the band in your blood, it never leaves,” said Ellen Kesler, class of ‘66, a 40-year-old junior high school teacher who carries the banner at the head of the band.

Kuzma--band director at Burbank High from 1970 to 1979, when many of the members of this band were his students--delivered some bad news:

First, they were going to march another two miles around the track “to build up endurance, and we’re going to play well all the way,” practicing “On Wisconsin.” In Burbank, that’s the all-purpose fight song, with words that go “Fight for Burroughs,” or “Fight for Burbank,” depending.

And he would not allow them to play “This Bud’s For You,” the beer jingle that’s a traditional favorite at Burbank High, in the parade.

“We have a reputation as a quality band. That would blow it.”

The band members groaned and jeered mutinously.

“This was much easier when you people feared for your grades,” he complained.

On parade day, torrents of rain swept Olive Avenue, where the paraders were to march from the hills of Universal City at one end to the towering rampart of the Verdugos at the other. A sparse crowd huddled in doorways. Soaked participants hunched on side streets, waiting miserably for the parade to begin so it would end.

The alumni band, assigned to the tail end, faced the longest wait. Teen-agers in some other bands broke and ran. Kuzma told the band he had withdrawn and they could go home.

Some did. Most didn’t, insisting they would march on their own. Some who left came running back when they heard that.

And so, far behind the Military Vehicle Collectors Assn. and the actress who plays the bartender on the Mike Hammer show and many well-fed horses, the Alumni Marching Band set off, wet hair plastered to their heads, T-shirts with their class years on the back stuck to their bodies.

Up to the judges’ stand, they played “On Wisconsin.”

Then the flag girls whipped their staffs like semaphore flags, the drum major lofted his silver staff, the baton twirlers (classes of ‘63, ’67 and ‘72) threw their batons in the air, the drum pounded and away they went toward the great wall of the Verdugos, thundering “This Bud’s For You.”