Right you are, Art. He deserves a thread of his own. Some of his problems make it hard for many of us to see his good points. And there are several.

Back to fonder memories: Those first couple of doozies at the U. of Chicago! Frank Warner bringing Frank Proffitt up from North Carolina. Richard Chase coming up on the bus with Horton Barker. Uncle Dick got a free bus trip out of that one by being Barker's guide (Horton Barker was blind, folks).

Frank Proffitt told me later that he watched the Stanley Brothers on the stage, with their fancy white hats and big resonator banjos, and wondered if he ought to try to put in a few extra-fancy licks on his old, home-made fretless banjer. Wisely, he decided: "No, I'll just go out there and do what I do. If they don't like me, well, I can always just go back home and say nothin' about it. I didn't tell anybody back home where I was goin', anyway."

Another favorite Frank Proffitt story: One evening, up in the little cabin on the hill behind his home there in "Pick-Britches Valley," I asked him what he thought about "Scruggs picking" on the banjo. He thought about it for a long, quiet moment. Then he replied, "Well, I'd like to be able to do it, and then not do it.

He was an amazing mountain man. Gone too early.

Sandy (old nostalgia himself)