I'm not sure when I first met Sandy and Caroline - probably at Fox Hollow in 1972 or thereabouts; I spent some days at their house when Archie Fisher recorded his Man With a Rhyme album. I don't think I appreciated nearly enough then who they were and what a profound impact they had on the world of folk music. I picked up many of their recordings in the 1970s; a friend says that he has more Folk Legacy recordings than any other two labels put together.

I've been mostly doing other things since the 1970s, so I haven't seen the Patons since probably about 1980 (if not earlier); but when I made some occasional postings here in 2002-2004, Sandy popped right up to renew the acquaintance. I often barely remember people I met last week...

The moment that always stands out for me, though, was this one, which I think of often:

It's 1973, and into the campground at the Fox Hollow folk Festival drives a giant RV with a TV antenna on top. a) an RV? b) a *TV antenna*???! It turned out that Sandy hated Nixon with a raw, visceral passion, and the expectation was that Nixon was going to resign sometime over the next few days. Sandy was determined that he was not going to miss seeing that SOB resign.

When Nixon resigned, in fact C&S were on stage; the resignation IIRC was at noon, exactly halfway through their spot. So at the moment Nixon was resigning, they sang, "Only remembered...for what we have done...shall we be missed when the others succeed us...reaping the seeds that in spring we have sown?"

After their spot, Evelyne Burnstine sang Seasons of Peace, and a young woman I didn't know sitting next to us said, "We should start America, the Beautiful. This is an important moment in the history of our country, and we should sing about America." So when EB was finished, the three of us started it and the entire audience picked it up. Still one of the most amazing public moments in my life, ever.

wg