Sometimes things work out okay.

A friend of mine named Terry Wadsworth (he wound up singing for two years with the New Christy Minstrels), who was living in Seattle at the time, was going to Tacoma (some thirty or so miles south of Seattle) for the day. And he was taking a number of items, including his guitar, a Goya classic. He got his car packed, jumped in, drove to Tacoma, and when he got there—no guitar!

He suddenly realized, with horror, what he had done. Driven off, leaving the guitar sitting on the parking strip.

A fellow by the name of Dick Chalcraft came home from work and parked in front of his apartment house. As he got out of the car, he spotted a guitar case sitting on the parking strip. He opened it up and, although he didn't know much about guitars, it looked like a pretty nice instrument. He had heard his upstairs neighbor playing the guitar and singing from time to time, so two and two came together immediately. He took the guitar into his apartment. Then the following day, he heard his neighbor moving around upstairs, so he took the guitar up to him.

Terry practically collapsed in gratitude and relief!

Terry and Dick and Dick's wife Beverly became good friends.

When it came to domestic duties, Terry was a catastrophe on the hoof. He once tried to bake a potato, and after the explosion, the potato had to be cleaned out of the oven with a hammer and chisel. After doing his laundry, he tried to iron a dress shirt. Fortunately he didn't incinerate it, but it would have been a whole lot better if he'd simply put it on straight out of the dryer, even though it wasn't wash-and-wear.

Bev took pity on him and did such things as feeding him and seeing to it that he didn't destroy his wardrobe. It wasn't that Terry was malingering to induce Bev to do his chores for him. He WAS a genuine, certified, and ordained klutz!

One thing led to another and Dick and Bev started hosting song fests at their apartment, then when they moved to a big house out north of Seattle, they would host hootenannies, house concerts, and song fests there, too. Sometimes they would be all-day things, starting with a picnic in their big back yard and run long into the evening.

Great people!!

Don Firth

P. S. Terry with the NCMs, back row, third from the left, CLICKY #1. And here's a characteristic shot, CLICKY #2)