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Fiddlers Convention: Old Friends

We almost always see people we know when we attend music festivals, especially when they are as close to home as the Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention.  On Saturday, we saw many old and new friends, including some that we not expecting to see.


We were happy to see old friends, Joyce and Jim Cauthen, from Birmingham.  Joyce was director of Alabama Folklife until her retirement a few years ago.  We have been privileged to have them in our home and have enjoyed their music on several occasions.



Here, they are competing in the Old Time Band category with their group, Flying Jenny.



Another friend we hadn't seen in a while was Wayne Jerrolds, from Savannah, Tennessee.  We have known him about forty years, and he has been Tennessee State Fiddling Champion numerous times.
While he was competing in the Classic Old-Time Fiddler category, he broke a string on his fiddle.  He handled it like a champion, and he was allowed to start over.  It was good seeing him.


When we first got there Saturday morning, we found a place to sit our chairs beside a friendly-looking couple.  We talked for a while, and he mentioned they lived in Mobile.  I told him I had worked on Dauphin Island in the summer of '93, at which time he asked me to take off my sun shades. I did, and he said he remembered me.  He took off his hat and sun shades, and I recognized him as one of the deck hands on the research vessel we worked on.  I even remembered his name, Russell!  Russell has been working at the Sea Lab all these 21 years since 1993, moving from deck hand to captain of the research vessel.



It's a small world, after all.

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