Mona was about fourteen years old when Ed made the dining room recordings at 17th Street. I had some detailed questions for her, since — unlike Lawrence, who was away in the service — she had first-hand memories of the whole experience.

Mona: My brother played a guitar…

Me: And you played the mandolin on some of them?

Mona: I don’t remember which one. I don’t remember but you can hear it in the background.

Me: What kind of room were those records made in?

Mona: Dining room.

Me: How big a room was it?

Lawrence: Not very big. Twelve feet by twelve feet, I guess.

Me: You put the recorder on the table and he’d sit up next to the table and play?

Mona: Yeah, it was on the table. It was an old one where they had to brush the curls off the record. He wasn’t holding the fiddle over the table.

Me: What time of the day were they made in?

Mona: Different times. He didn’t make them all in one day.

Lawrence: It mostly depended on when Ralph had the time, I guess.

Mona: Yeah and — again — it depended on whether Pop felt like it.

Me: Was he drinking during any of those records?

Mona: No.

Me: Do you think those records were a pretty good representation of how he played or do you think he played a lot better than what’s on those records?

Mona: He played a lot better than what was on the records because some of them was a little too fast. You know, the speed on them. When he was in a good mood you could just hear the happiness in it.

Me: So a lot of that’s not on the records?

Mona: No, a lot of it’s lost forever.

     In the car on the way home, Lawrence told me more about why he thought Ed never recorded commercially. “He was a kind of a proud man. But I’m like Curly Wellman: if he’d been alive back when these people first started coming to me back thirty years ago he could’ve made a bundle of money if he’d a wanted to. If he hadn’t been afraid of being taken by recording companies and things.”

     As we made our way through town, Lawrence pointed out a spot on Greenup Avenue where Pop used to play: “Right here on this empty corner there used to be a two or three story building. It was a big restaurant called Russ’ place. Pop used to play on the sidewalk out here on his own when he felt like it, if the weather was good. He’d go in there and stay all day and play a while and drink a while and talk a while and go back and play a while.”