Sandy,

Thank you; great insights into a fine song. Do you realize that you've been blowing me away with that kind of insightful information ever since Chicago & Kroch's & Brentano book store---circa 1962---THIRTY-SEVEN @%$&*$%@#$^%(*% years ago? Even before that actually---a set you did at a 1959 Sunday afternoon hootenanny at the GATE OF HORN. Your Elektra LP was coming out and I was the only kid who ordered it in the one big record store in Evansville, Indiana---Bob Shadd's Music. I was working at my uncles skirt (female--not fenders) factory for the summer then. The record came into the store on the last possible day I could pick it up before heading to college for my first and only year there. It took 'em 8 weeks (our entire summer vacation) to get it in stock. I had checked in with them every day that summer to see if it had arrived. I lost 35 pounds that summer--trying to save money by not eating lunch and from running to that record store and back to work during my lunch hours.

Sorry to those of you who have expressed REAL dismay at my tendency to be the thread creep that I sometimes am. I assure you that I'll try to hold it to a minimum---but the memories keep flooding in and, like gas, they sometimes escape in inapropriate threads. I don't mean to stink up the place or ruin the intended mission of Mudcat. The BS threads often do get away from music and become rather outrageous. One guy's humor is the other gal's merde.

Rick,

If I say, "I feel your pain", am I opening myself to snide comments? Well, any picker on the road in our subculture has known that the choices made were not always practical in the minds of some close ones who "only want what's best for us"--or so they said too often. We did what we did out of love for the music and the freedom of the wonderful aspects of the lifestyle. (The downsides are all too obvious, to me at least, 58 years out.) As Joe Campbell said, "We followed our bliss!" I may not have total empathy--but I do understand a crapload of what you're feeling.

Art