One of my fondest memories of my children's early years is of taking my son to a ten-day-long bluegrass music festival when he was less than a year old. For those of you who have never been to a bluegrass festival, the true objective of the whole thing is to ignore the "name" performers on the stage (unless one of them is Doc Watson) and participate in as many informal campground jam sessions as possible. As the then-wife and I were religious about sharing child-care duties, it was inevitable that the desire to pick and the responsiblities of fatherhood would conflict. No problem! Just pop the kid into one of those backpack kid carriers, grab the D-35 and away we go. By the time the festival was over the kid had visited every campsite at the place and everybody knew his name while I was just "the guy with the Martin in front and Tony in back".

That happened more than twenty years ago, had to sell the D-35 somewhere along the way, and that kid lives hundreds of miles away now and plays in a rock band. But, about once a year we try to get together at a bluegrass or folk festival and he brings the grandsons along and, though they're too big to tote around in backpacks now, we head off to all the campsites with D-28 in hand and they charm the ladies while Grand-dad plays Whiskey Before Breakfast.

Cheers

bwl