Wow! What a collection we all have! I have a lot of great old photographs, too... some are tintypes, and some more recent. I have a great old photograph of my father standing in front of his brand new Model T, taken out in Montana. He's standing there with his hands in his pockets with a big, silly grin on his face. I had never seen the photograph growing up. My Uncle Harold from Eden Prairie, Minnesota (only a Midwestern could picture the Garden of Eden as being prairie land) sent it to me when I was in my fifties. The story behind the photograph was even better. My Father had been courting a young woman in his neighborhood, and she moved out to Sydney, Montana. He took off in his new Model T and drove out to try to win her heart back. But it wasn't to be. I realized that there was a song there and wrote it for my Dad. After that, the family started calling him Montana.

And what about songs? This thread ain't dead. I suspect that a lot of us are like me... came to folk music through recordings, more than singing around the table. My Father didn't sing much. Hardly ever heard him sing. But, he loved The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. It was probably his favorite song, and the only one I ever heard him sing. Many, many years after I left home, I was talking to my Father on the phone and told him that I was going to record the old hymn Softly and Tenderly for a gospel album, and he started singing it, over the phone. Choked me up. I couldn't believe that he knew all the words, or would sing it over the phone.

My Mother sang a lot more... mostly hymns, but popular songs from the turn of the century too ... Casey Would Waltz With The Strawberry Blonde, Bicycle Built For two.. the songs she heard as a kid. I have two older sisters who liked to sing around the house, but my love of folk music came from the occasional songs by Burl Ives, Harry Belafonte, the Weavers, or quasi-folk like Frankie Lane. Did you parents leave YOU a handful of songs?

Jerry