Yeah, I too have few gregrets.

There were many moments I marvelled at the fact that Carol went along with me on the adventure. It was a less than lucrative path but she stayed the course---as did I. There was the music---the songs---my mission to find them and put 'em into a setting that showed how much I loved the tales they told. The luck to happen upon them was almost an accident except for me simply knowing what I liked---knowing what I thought real folk music was and is---and then going after that brass ring. The road life was perfect when in my 20s (in the 60s) and well into the 80s. In '67 Carol and I took off and "retired first" on a small inheritance---for 3 years---singing all the way---but what the hell, gasoline was .30 a gallon then. We started a little FOLK ART SHOP in Depoe Bay, Oregon--on the coast. Went broke and returned to Chicago and Chris was born in '70. By then I'd been playing at the No Exit coffeehouse ten years off and on. (Five sets a night for $10.00) Did the mesmerizing Chicago night life folkie scene---festivals--schools in the winter and, in the 80s, Larry Rand and I hosted a weekly live national radio show for NPR 'cause the producing station, mistakenly, thought Garrison Keilor's show was a FOLK show and we were gonna help them make a million bucks. We rode that tornado until it ran out of hot air. Then, because of John Hartford and another accident or luck or whatever, I got gigs on steamboats on the Mississippi River that lasted another ten years. The Urban Gatways agency school gigs dovetailed beautifully with the 5 months a year I was on the river. Off days I did festivals, house concerts, bigger concerts and whatever---all trying to stay fairly close to Peru, Illinois where we lived then mainly because the Chicago schools were absolutely the pits and, also, 'cause Carol was ill by then. By the 80s I was going down hill physically myself and had a bunch or spinal surgeries to CURE the problems. (Those didn't help.) I got pretty depressed about then as picking was getting real hard to do -- and finally Mayo Clinic told me I'd had MS for 15 years (which I talked about too much in 50 other threads already. Our son is 31 now, has a college degree, and working with computers and trying to find time to write while married to the lovely Shannon. Those two have given Carol and I the most fantastic granddaughter ever produced --- Chloe Moon.

Sure, I'm disabled now and Carol is too. My making music is a past endeavor. We are gladder than ever that we "retired first"--when we both had the energy to climb the mountains. We're broke but there's music and books and Mudcat and FRIENDS and a glorious panorama parading before our eyes every moment of every day we are lucky enough to awaken and open those.

There was a King Of The Beatniks 40 years ago in Chicago. Bill Smith was his name and he defined "BEATNIK as being anyone who was satisfied with the cheap seats at the concert. You got to hear alll the music without all the hassle of conforming to all the monkey business and B.S. The practice we got "making a living from folk music" makes us truly thankful for the strange and rather beat life we lead these days. Carol and I have never had less or enjoyed it more. These days I try to live by the adage, "MAKE THE MOST OF ALL THAT COMES, AND THE LEAST OF ALL THAT GOES !!"

So, what's to regret???

Art Thieme