I just finished rereading Wilma Dykeman's book on the French Broad. It was just as great a pleasure the second time around.

As Charley Noble has said he and I traveled to that country long ago (I remember it as March 1962) and had a many of adventures.

One of my stepfathers was D. K. Wilgus, who among many other notable accomplishments wrote the liner notes for most of Obray Ramsey's recordings though the two men never met. In 1995 I returned with my mother to Marshall NC. We arrived in town about 5 pm and pulled off the main street to consider our next move. We wanted dinner, a place to stay, and a way to contact Obray. As it turned out, we were in front of the local State Patrol office, so we went in to ask. The uniformed young woman with the long braid said, "Well, the only place to stay is the Marshall House B&B, just around the corner and up the hill. For dinner there's Mama's up on the bypass. They usually close at five, but I'll call her so she'll wait for you. And Obray's niece runs the video store next to Mama's, so you can ask her for his phone number."

We had dinner at Mama's, got the phone number at the video store, and checked into the Marshall House (where we got to be spectators at least in the making of a young girl's prom dress). We called Obray's house from the B&B (no cell phones then) and got a rather cool reception from his wife Tressa Lee, but she said we could come by the next morning at 10.

We got to the Ramsey place at 10 and knocked on the door. Tressa Lee had chosen to be away (the reason for that is another story) so Obray answered the door. I introduced myself as one of the college boys who had met him while visiting Mel Lyman and he said, "Oh, yeah, one of the boys from Maine" where I had gone to college. Then I introduced my mother as Eleanor Long-Wilgus. He straightened up and said, "Wilgus? Did you say Wilgus? Are you D. K. Wilgus' widow?" My mother said yes. "Come on in, have a seat, I'm so glad to meet you!"

We visited for an hour or so. He told us how much D. K. had helped his music career and how sorry he was never to have met him. Obray had pretty much given up music back in the '70s and gone back to lumbering and such for a living; actually he had never given up his "day job".

When Tressa Lee got home after we had left and Obray told her about the D. K. connection she wrote my mother a fine letter apologising for her rudeness (she though we were just friends of Mel Lyman and she hated Mel). She and my mother corresponded regularly until my mother's death a few years ago.

The circle will be unbroken.