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Before he got eighty-sixed at Laurel Hill for riding around in his golf cart, drunk, Uncle Wayne was a regular at bluegrass festivals throughout the south.

He had a disability pension from the Air Force, for being crippled with arthritis from a fall on the ice in Korea, and could afford to go to festivals, and drink, without having to hold a job, and Uncle Wayne cut a wide swath on the circuit for years.

Potter was a bluegrass stalwart. Once ABC filmed a special called Red, White, and Bluegrass, about parking-lot pickers, and featured Potter, who had presence, more than the acts on stage. Doyle Lawson was miffed about that.

Bill Monroe once asked Potter to pick rhythm guitar and sing lead with the Bluegrass Boys, but Potter refused, saying he didn't want to live on a bus. At the time, he was divorced from his common-law wife, Suzette, and living in her VW van, in Navarre Campground, heating water for coffee in a tin can.

Janice used to write for Bluegrass Unlimited. As a free-lancer writer she interviewed Ernest, when he played out at the beach--know what I mean, Vern?--and said he was sexy. She interviewed Jerry Reed, when he played at the Ocean Opry, before he made the buddy movies. That is, movies with his pal, Buddy Reynolds
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David "Jug" Brown was a writer, as country music songwriters call themselves. When the Gillis Brothers were folk masters at Wolf Trap, and had the picture in the program with Owen playing fiddle with them, Darrell McCall was also a folk master. He invited David to attend, as his guest, but Jug couldn't get off from his job driving a cement truck to go.

Lowell has a bluegrass band. Lowell won the Martin guitar Balder plays at a festival, had Randy Wood set it up, and sold it to Balder.

Gerald is a fan. He supports the groups Owen and Balder are in by buying their records.

So it was natural our boys would be exposed to the music, and the atmosphere of bluegrass festivals, and the good country people you meet at bluegrass festivals, from an early age.

A bluegrass festival was a good place to take kids, growing up.

They could play, safely, with other kids their age, outside. They could listen to grown-ups tell stories around the campfire. They could hear music being played, live, on acoustic instruments. If they played themselves, they could join a jam session and would be invited to play a song they knew. Older musicians would show them licks.

There were no black people, no Yankees, and many of the women were stay-at-home moms, who raised kids, sewed, cooked, and kept the house in order.

Average Americans. White folks. Working people.

African-Americans were welcome, if they acted right. Anyone who loved bluegrass loved jazz, blues, rhythm-and-blues. Black music. Why, black music was almost as original an American art-form as bluegrass music.

Yankees were welcome. Everybody knows I love Yankees. Bless their cold little hearts.

Feminists were welcome. You can't keep a woman down on the farm after she's seen TV. Can't keep them barefoot and pregnant. They want to be liberated. Who can blame them?

I saw a parallel between what I was doing in my life, as an artist, and the bluegrass way of life, where the artists went where the fans were, knew their fans firsthand, produced their own records and sold them at festivals, after a show, worked on the bus, dug privies, sweated and got dirty, shared recipes, minded other people's children, called on the sick, held benefits for victims of illness or accident or death. Took care of their own. Kept it in the family. Stuck with their friends.

Made white liquor, grew pot.

Rock and roll, then the Nashville Sound, pushed bluegrass musicians off the Grand Ole Opry. Bluegrass bands had to record albums to sell in truck stops. Yuppies buying cowboy boots made them switch to Hushpuppies, or running shoes. Or maybe it was weight problems and bad feet. Age. The population aged. Their fan-base aged.

But always young, hot pickers came up. Pickers steeped in the tradition, and the values. The lore.

I was a hot young underground writer, once. Selling pamphlets after poetry readings.

The bullfight poster! The Chianti bottle with a candle in it! The beat chicks!

Now I'm old. An old beatnik.

2007 is the 50th anniversary of my high school graduating class.

I still have my dream, though.

I dream of playing the swinette on stage, at Americana music festivals, selling my books at the record table afterwards. A swinette, you stretch two horsehairs across a hog's ass and pick it with your teeth. Brew mounts the steps, walks across the stage with great dignity, takes a stuffed Miss Piggy doll out from under his robes, lifts her skirt, presses her butt to his face, and squeals like a stuck pig. Great cry and little wool, as the Devil said when he sheared the hogs.

Swinette pickers of the world, unite!

Sex, drugs, and Flatt and Scruggs!