Great website, Alex! Love the cartoons ("Make it sew" indeed! Really ba-a-a-a-ad!)!

I've always kinda wondered where "mousethief" came from. Well. . . .

Back in 19 aught 61, I was singing in a coffeehouse called "Pamir House" in the University District in Seattle. Good place to sing. They usually had two or three singers up front at any given time, and it was a fun place to perform because it was like swapping songs in someone's living room (and getting paid for it!). And the audiences liked it, enjoying the informality and the unplanned and frequently goofy banter between the singers.

Anyway, there was a guy who came in regularly, and he'd try to pick a table real close to the stage area. He'd put something under the table and he'd keep leaning over and fiddling with it. Finally, one evening on a break, I caught him be surprise by sitting down at his table and saying, "Can I take a look at your tape recorder?" Surprised and a bit embarrassed, he showed it to me. It was a small reel-to-reel battery-operated job, cumbersome by later standards (cassette recorders hadn't come out yet), but tidy nevertheless. He explained to me that he was going to the U. of W. and living in the dorms. He was teaching himself to play the guitar and trying to learn songs. He didn't have a phonograph in his room, so he couldn't learn songs off records, but he did have the recorder which he'd bought to supplement note-taking in class. He said he hoped we didn't mind, but he was "collecting" stuff, both to listen to and to learn. "I use the tape recorder for gonffing songs," he said.

I thought it was just a made-up word. Now I know! Thanks!

Don Firth