I've talked about Paul Durst in many threads of this forum. Do a forum search on his name.

Here's some of it:

His parents settled in Wisconsin in 1848.

Paul was born in 1868.

I tape recorded him in 1960---when he was 93.

He was a Wobbly who remembered the IWW splitting from the Socialist Labor Party in 1905.

He'd worked in the lumber camps and Was a member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He told me they had introduced hoof and mouth disease to Europe (Germany). Bill's cattle all had to be destroyed. He came back penniless from that trip and had to be re-financed by his old pal P.T. Barnum.

Paul was asleep under a boardwalk in Chicago when the bomb went off at the Haymarket. The Haymarket Riot. It woke him up.

He was involved in the strike in Ludlow, Colorado that culminated with the Ludlow massacre.

Was a hobo fiddler--a singer of IWW songs--and many other things.

Meeting Paul Durst was an extremely important happening in my life! Utah Phillips used my tapes of Paul (what remained of them) as the centerpiece of one of his Loafer's Glory radio shows. (Show number 77, if I'm remembering right.) It's available from Utah at his website.

I sure do wish he was still with us. What a link he was.

Art Thieme