Dear Sandy,

I haven't had a chance to check in for a couple of days, so I missed the birthday party! But it got me to reminiscing. . . .

Weel do I mind in the days of lang syne (Seattle, late summer or early fall of 1954, if my memory serves me) a big party and songfest at the old store-front down on Brooklyn Avenue. I had just traded in my $9.95 plywood guitar on a new Martin 00-18, my first really nice guitar, and this was the first party I took it to. The occasion (as if we needed an "occasion" to get together and sing) was that you were about to return to the East by means of thumb.

The singing was fantastic that night! And then came the sermon.

As a child, Donnie Logsden (at the time, the pearl-diver at The Chalet restaurant, itself the scene of many a song-fest) had been a street-corner preacher. He had long since been defrocked, but he still remembered how to do it. Concerned about your rather slim state of finances for the trip, he delivered an impassioned twenty-minute sermon (so impassioned that he could barely squeak at the end) and passed a collection plate. I remember you, sitting there with your face in your hands, shaking your head. But we couldn't send our brother minstrel out into the world without at least a little traveling money.

You've traveled far and accomplished much since those lean but glorious days!

How far that little candle throws his beams! - William Shakespeare

Happy Birthday, Sandy!

Don Firth