Egad! I must be slipping! But at my age, I'm entitled.

In the very early 1960s, the Gateway Singers did a concert at the University of Washington. Another friend of mine (with the oddball name of Zibby Kaiser) somehow knew that the group was going their separate ways and would meet up again in about a week in San Francisco. And that the one woman in the quartet, Elmerlee Thomas, needed a ride to the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Zibby asked me if I'd like to ride a long, and I said "Sure!" It's a long ride to SeaTac and the three of us talked about all kinds of things, including folk music.

The following evening, John and Sally Ashford were having a song Fest gathering at their house and I was invited. When I walked in, sitting on the sofa with his long-necked five string banjo, was Jerry Walter, one of the Gateway Singers. He didn't sing the whole lot, he wanted to hear us singing. But during the course of the evening, he sang one of the nicest versions of "Pretty Saro," complete with very gentle banjo accompaniment, that I've ever heard. I was able to reconstruct it, fortunately, and that's pretty much the way I sing it myself (but with guitar accompaniment).

Within fairly recent years, I met Charlie Noble when he did a house concert here at Stewart Hendrickson's house. Genie was there also. And I've seen her maybe a couple of times at gatherings at Bob (Deckman) Nelson's house in Everett, Washington.

Don Firth