I've always heard it said about bagpipers, and attributed to Oscar Wilde. Or was it Oscar who observed, upon hearing a bagpipe: "Thank God there's no odor!"

Anyway, Rick, I wanted to offer a story to the thread you started here. Perhaps this has enough "folk" content to be of interest. Caroline and I were singing at a small folk festival in Lumpkin, Georgia, where, incidentally, we heard some great shape-note singing from members of a local African-American church. It was quite late in the evening when the program wrapped up, and I was hungry, so we went to the only restaurant in town that was open at that hour, a somewhat rustic, far from fancy, diner sort of place. I decided to order scrambled eggs and toast, just to get my cholesterol level back up to where it belonged. The waitress, a young and very pleasant blond, as I recall, said that she was sorry, but scrambled eggs were not available.

Looking at the menu, I observed, "You have a fried egg sandwich on your menu, right?" Yes, she agreed, that was available. "Well," says I, brilliantly, "if you can make a fried egg sandwich, you have the eggs which you could scramble, and the bread from which you could make the toast, right?" "Yes," she smiled, being very patient with this ignorant damyankee, "but I can't serve you scrambled eggs, sir, 'cause we ain't got no grits."

Honest to God. True story. Caroline will verify it.

Sandy