A few days later, I called John Lozier, a harpist in South Portsmouth, Kentucky. I could tell right away that he was feisty. When I mentioned Ed’s name, he said, “Ed Haley played so soft and so smooth you had to listen when he played. Well, that’s about all I can tell you ol’ buddy.”

Of course, I wanted more.

I pressed John by asking where he first saw Haley.

“Sitting on Market Street over here in Portsmouth, Ohio, playing for nickels and dimes back in the twenties or early thirties,” he said. “That’s the way he made a living. Raised five children. Then after that him and his wife separated. Now, can you imagine that?”

John seemed so sure of his memories that I asked him about Ed’s repertoire.

“John Harrod always had me to play one tune — nobody else played it,” he said. “My grandfather knew it, called ‘Portsmouth Airs’. I play all the fiddle tunes on a harp. My grandfather made fiddles and played fiddles but he never would allow me to pick it up. He’s afraid I’d drop and break the neck out of it. So when I was three years old I started playing fiddle tunes — so they tell me. I’m 85…or will be.”

I wondered what the secret was to getting that old and being as healthy as he sounded to be and he said, “Ah, boy. I work every day at something. I got a garden here. I’ve got out a hundred pounds of taters and I planted some beans and my cabbage is out and I move around a little bit every day.”

I had more questions.

Did Ed play a lot of waltzes?

“He could play anything,” John answered immediately.

Did you ever hear him sing?

“If he ever sung a song, I never knew it.”

How did he hold his fiddle?

“Very loosely,” John said, confirming Mona’s memory.

John asked me if I ever got up to his part of the country, then said, “Well, old buddy, I’m fixing to go to church and it’s good talking to ya. I live at South Portsmouth. If you’re ever up in here come around and let’s take a look at one another.”