I want to make this next posting very concise so that I can get to some of the excellant comments that have posted. Also at this time in Seattle, 1957 - 1962, was a wild and wooley coffee house scene. Don Firth has written some excellant information about this. It's where so many of us learned and honed our performance skills. The competition was great and only the strong, or the prettiest, survived. The "red scare" was also very strong on the street. There were many rumors about FBI informants amongst us. This led to the inevitable games: who is it ... I heard ... etc. At this same time, I had become very close friends with a prominant and influence Black man (in those days we used the word Negro) named Keve Bray. He proved to be a VERY good friend and mentor to me. He influenced me greatly. He was a consummate actor (Shakesperian) and was the director of a local amateur theater group called "The Contemporary Players." He loved folk music and we hit it off. We wrote and scored plays and musical togethers. Then he asked me to join his 'all black' theater group and I agreed. We had much fun presenting me to the other actors as the "token white." Keve worked hard with me, giving me acting and elecution lessons. All this further increased my performance skills. And yes, I did run into some very hard times being white ... I was not accepted by all the members. And, to be fair, I put my white foot in my mouth many times. So, here I was, 18 and 19 years old, VERY active in the Seattle area, singing in coffee houses, singing for suspect orginizations, being prominant in the Seattle Folk Music Society, performing on stage with an all Black theater (except me) group ... no wonder I was visited by the FBI. Then to top things off, I promoted, and hosted Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, C.J. Borroughs (Sonny's cousin) in a very large, well attended concert at the Moore theater. This was at the time that Pete was still blacklisted and couldn't buy a job. Enough of the telling of the history. Now I want to mention one event that seems to crystalize, for me, the "temper of those times." It was a Saturday night hoot. We were all there, the usual crowd. I was going with a girl named Nancy (have you noticed that I haven't even brought up the subject of the girls yet?) and we were at the home of someone named Ray ... I forget his last name but I can still see him today. As the evenings singing went on, he and I wandered off to another part of the house and started visiting. He was much older than I, I was about 18. And he was one scared puppy. I'd never seen a grownup this scared and it startled me. He was afraid that he was going to lose his government pension. You see, he was one of the nuclear physicists that worked on the Manhatten Project. (the building of the atomic bomb). His best friend was Robert Oppenheimer, and he had just watched him get crucified by the COMMITTEE. Today I still feel his fear. So enough of my history. I'm going to hang up for a while. I'll be back when I've had time to study the postings ... love you all ... Bob Nelson