Tag Archives: fiddling

In Search of Ed Haley 332

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, Music

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The next day, at the fiddling contest, Brandon met George Carr of Madison, West Virginia. George said Ed was the reason he started playing the fiddle many years ago.

“I was raised in Calhoun County,” he said. “I first saw Ed Haley as a small boy in the one-room Walker School House. Sometime in the early ’30s, about ’34, ’35, I’d say. Him and his wife came and they played for us and he fascinated me with that fiddle. And he had a son called ‘Puckett’ and I don’t know what ever became of him. But Ed and his wife would play on the streets in Spencer where the stock sale was every Friday and they would play there and she pinned a tin cup in her apron and they got nickels and dimes and quarters and fifty cents but no greenbacks. He stayed with a fella by the name of Laury Hicks who was a local fiddler and a self-taught veterinarian. His wife, Minnie Hicks, was a midwife — delivered many, many babies — who held my father in her arms when he was a small baby and he died in ’75 and he was 77 years old.”

In Search of Ed Haley 330

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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Meanwhile, plans were underway for an “Ed Haley Fiddle Festival” in Ashland. The whole idea was conceived by Pat Gray, a local real estate agent who’d been inspired by an article in the Ashland Daily Independent regarding our interest in Ed’s life. Pat incorporated the “festival” (which was actually a fiddling contest) into Ashland’s Poage Landing Days, a citywide carnival-like celebration centered on the downtown area. The fiddle contest was scheduled to take place in the basement/auditorium of a Presbyterian church in Ashland. Pat declared me the “Grand Marshall” of the Poage Landing Parade, booked my band and I for an evening show and even offered to put us up at her place.

We pulled into Ashland on September 20th, 1996 and parked the bus in a church parking lot just down the hill from Pat Haley’s. Mike Compton, my mandolin player, and I walked up to Pat’s for breakfast (at her invitation) where I found her entertaining Mona and Patsy (Jack’s wife). Mona had written out the words to some of Ed’s songs for me, like “My Happy Childhood Days Down on the Farm”:

When a lad I used to dwell

In a place I loved so well

Far away among the clover and the bees.

Where the morning glory vine

‘Round our cabin door did twine

And the robin red breast sang among the trees.

In my happy boyhood days down on the farm.

There was a father old and gray

And a sister young and gay

And a mother dear to keep us from all harm.

There I passed life’s sunny hours

Running wild among the flowers

In my happy boyhood days down on the farm.

It was obvious that Mona had been thinking a lot about Ed’s music, so I didn’t waste any time getting my fiddle out for her. She caught me a bit off guard when she asked me if she could accompany me using Mike’s mandolin. The next thing I knew, she was playing right along with me — scarily like her mother. After we’d finished a tune everyone got really quiet, then Patsy looked at Mike and said, “You’ve just lost your job.”

Several tunes later, I asked Mona about Ed’s bowing style. There was a lot of conflicting information on that, so I wanted to get her opinion again. She said Ed “mixed things up,” or more specifically, that he varied his bowing between long and short strokes.

I had kinda figured that was true and had even come to think that maybe he had “area bowings,” much like his “area tunes.” It’s really a very natural thing. I play different tunes and different ways when I’m with the Goforths and Hawthornes in Missouri than when I’m with Earl Scruggs and Benny Martin in Nashville, or Fletcher Bright, or Jim Wood, or Bruce Molsky and Brad Leftwich, or Charlie Acuff, or Buddy Spicher, or Hoot Hester.

I should say here that all this business of bow holds, short and long bow strokes, and whether Ed held the fiddle under his chin or not, should never be taken as Scripture. In my own experience, I’ve held the fiddle under my chin, on my arm, on my chest, with all kinds of chin rests, no chin rests, shoulder rests, and used different kinds of bows. (I even used to tape a tin penny nail or two on the bow shaft for weight when I pulled it for long square dances so I wouldn’t have to press down with my index finger.) I’ve bowed heavy, light, long strokes, short strokes, off-string, on-string, and so forth. I’m sure that Ed’s technique — like mine or probably any musician — was constantly changing. What I have tried to document with Ed is who saw him play a certain way, where and when. It’s important to keep that in mind so as to not get lost in the contradictions.

In Search of Ed Haley 326

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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From Harts proper, we headed up Harts Creek to the home of Luster Dalton, a son of Ed’s friend, Dood Dalton. Luster was born in 1924 and used to play the fiddle on weekends for free drinks at local “dives” with his brother Stump and two cousins. I asked him if he learned much from Ed and he said, “Yeah, I learned a lot from the old man Ed. He was a real fiddle player, son.”

I wondered if anybody around Harts played like Ed.

“Not as good as he could, no,” Luster said. “I’d have to say no to that. That old man really knew how to handle that job, buddy.”

Luster tried to remember some of Ed’s tunes.

“Way back in them days, they had one they called ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ and ‘Wild Horse’ and such as that on down the line,” he said.

I got my fiddle out and pointed it toward Luster, who said, “They ain’t a bit of use in me to try that. I’ve had too many bones broke.”

I tried to get him to just show me anything — but he refused.

He chose instead to talk, starting with how Ed came to visit his father on Big Branch.

“He came about onest a year and would maybe stay a month,” Luster said. “He’d maybe stay a week at Dad’s and go to some other family and stay a week and go up Logan and stay a week or so with somebody. Him and his old woman both would come and a couple three of his kids. Mona was one of them’s name. About all of them I guess has been to my dad’s. I don’t see how they raised a bunch of kids — neither one of them could see. That’s something we got to think about. They was good people. And a fella by the name of Bernie Adams used to come with them — he was a guitar picker — and they’d sit up there and sing and pick up at my dad’s till twelve o’clock and go to bed and go to sleep, get up the next morning, go into ‘er again. I went in the army in 1940, I believe it was, and I know I’ve not heard from them since then.”

Luster didn’t know if Milt Haley was a fiddler but had heard the old-timers talk about how either him or Green McCoy had shot Hollena Brumfield through the jaw at the mouth of the Rockhouse Fork on Harts Creek.

“They were murdered in a little log house,” Luster said. “They took a pole axe and beat them to death and then chopped them up.”

In Search of Ed Haley 325

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Logan, Music

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That night, Brandon and I congregated at Billy Adkins’ house in Harts Bottom.  In ensuing conversation, Billy told us about Marshall Kelley, an old-timer in the community who remembered Ed. He dialed Marshall up, then put me on the telephone. Marshall said he was seventy-three years old, had been born and raised about three miles up Harts Creek and was the son of a Baptist preacher. He was great: I didn’t have to prod him with questions. He just took off, beginning with a story about seeing Ed walking up toward Dood Dalton’s.

“I was about two or three blocks away from him,” Marshall said. “I lived in a house about 100 yards from the road and I could see the people going and coming up and down the road. And I saw a man — a little bit short — going, walking. It looked like he was carrying a guitar — might have been a mandolin — in one hand and his fiddle in the other hand. Somebody said they believed that was Ed Haley and he was being led by a young man that was just a little taller than him. In other words, this man was holding onto his arm. They were walking side by side. And he went down there and went up a hollow then about half a mile — maybe three quarters of a mile — to the home of Dood Dalton. They were acquainted with each other. Ed played the fiddle the biggest part of the afternoon.”

I asked Marshall if he remembered anything specific about Ed’s fiddling.

“I heard him play the ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ on the fiddle and made her cackle,” he said. “Buddy, he could make that sound just almost exactly like a chicken cackling. And I noticed the sound of that fiddle. And down in those little grooves — places where you could look down in the head of his fiddle — I could see some letters down in there, like a little sticker, that said, ‘Made in Germany.’ And his fiddle looked old cause it didn’t have much varnish on it. Dood made mention about putting new varnish on it and he said he didn’t want to. He said they played better — had a better sound — without any varnish on it. None of them sounded just like his fiddle and he wouldn’t change.”

Marshall said he saw Ed play at Logan and Huntington, too.

Then I heard him two or three times in Logan up around the courthouse singing and playing. One time they was a woman with him somebody said was his wife and she was also blind. I believe she was playing a mandolin. Then the next thing, I grew up a little bit and I went to Huntington. And I was a going down one of the streets and I heard a fiddle a playing. It was far enough away that I couldn’t tell what direction it was in. I stopped once and listened. And after a while, I went on down there and here was a gang of people ganged up and there was him and his wife again a playing. And I thought as I went walking down that way, ‘That sounds just like Ed Haley.’ And sure enough it was.”

Just before Marshall and I hung up, he told me what he knew about the Haley children.

“I only got acquainted with the one named Clyde,” he said. “And I saw him there at Dood Dalton’s house. Just talked with him a little bit. Me and him was approximately the same age. He got to sparking Dood’s girl and I was trying to take her away from him and whenever I seen I couldn’t make no headway I just walked away and left and then she quit him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 323

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Holden

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About a half hour later, we drove up the Smoke House Fork of Harts Creek to see Dorothy Brumfield. Dorothy lived in a white one-story home situated on a hillside overlooking the Hugh Dingess Elementary School, just down the stream from the old Henderson Dingess homeplace. Dorothy had been born in 1929 at Louisa, Kentucky, but came to Harts when she was seventeen and soon married John Brumfield, a son of Ed’s friend, Cecil. Her father was a descendant of Albert Dingess, a member of the 1889 mob.

I started the conversation by asking Dorothy about Ed. She said she never knew him personally but heard that he lost his eyesight after his father dipped him in water. She also heard that he was a great fiddler when he got “pretty high” but was mean and eager to fight if he drank too much.

Dorothy knew the story about Ed borrowing a fiddle from her father-in-law Cecil Brumfield; her husband later acquired it. “He had come through here and borrowed a fiddle off of Paw Brumfield, him and Bernie Adams, and went up yonder to Logan and pawned it,” she said. “Paw Brumfield liked to never found it.”

Dorothy said the only time she actually saw Ed was when her husband brought him home early one Sunday morning around 1949-50.

“My husband worked at Holden, and I’d heard tell of Ed Haley but I hadn’t met him,” she said. “So John stopped at the top of Trace Mountain at this place. Back then, they called them saloons. And he was supposed to been in at one o’clock in the morning. He didn’t make it. Oh, did I get mad when four o’clock come in the morning. Here he knocked on the door and I could tell someone was with him, but I couldn’t make out that it was a blind person with him. I thought it was just somebody real drunk that had passed out. He got here in the house with him and I fixed them something to eat.”

“Why didn’t I know you all was over there and got me a babysitter and caught me a ride over there and had me a time?” Dorothy said to her husband. “What would you done if I’d walked in?”

“What, mam?” Ed said.

“All them women John had over there tonight,” she said to Ed.

“Mam, he didn’t have no women,” Ed said.

“Now sir, you told me you couldn’t see,” she said. “How do you know?”

“Well, John sit beside of me,” Ed said.

A little later, Dorothy fixed Ed a bed and she went and asked her husband, “Would you tell me who in the world you’ve brought home with you again?”

John said he’d stopped in at that saloon and found Ed playing music “and a bunch of them women dancing” and he “wouldn’t leave Ed there. When they closed, he brought him here.”

“Well, then they got up the next morning and I said, ‘Now John you help him around and show him around.’ I was already mad at John for laying out. Little bit jealous, too. We hadn’t been married long.”

Dorothy said she cooked a big breakfast for everyone.

“Mam, have you got any onions?” Ed asked her at the table.

“Yes I have but why would you want an onion for breakfast?” she said.

“Don’t you know what onions are good for?” Ed said. “Many a things.”

Dorothy said Ed seemed intelligent by the morning conversation.

After breakfast, Ed went back into the front room and played the fiddle for Dorothy’s kids in front of the fireplace. She said he held his fiddle under his chin and played “Wildwood Flower” and an extremely fast version of “Cripple Creek”.

John said, “Ed, play that there ‘Birdie’ for these children.”

“Well, he stayed around and I think they drunk all the booze up,” Dorothy said. “John, he was wanting more booze, too, so he went off with Ed to Aunt Alice’s or somewhere and got some liquor and he didn’t come back till about dark. I don’t know where all he took Ed. When he come back, he kept telling me why he brought him here. He said that he didn’t want to leave him. If something happened, he wouldn’t forgive hisself. Nobody else wouldn’t take him after all the big time was over with.”

In Search of Ed Haley 321

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber

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Trying to lift our spirits, we went to see Vilas Adams, who lived on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork. Vilas was a great-grandson of Ben Adams and a grandson of Ticky George Adams. He was very friendly, inviting us inside his very nice home where his wife fed us a whole mess of good food, which we ate between asking questions.

I first asked him about his memories of Ed Haley, who he said frequented Ewell Mullins’ store during the late 1930s and early forties.

“Down there at old man Ewell’s store, they’d gather in there of an evening and tell tales, old man Jeff Baisden and them,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw Ant Adams and I would walk down there and then Ed would walk down there from Uncle Peter’s. It was a quarter a mile — just a little hop and a jump I call it. Ed would come in there and fiddle for them and if they wanted a certain song, they’d give him a quarter or fifty cents. That was good money I guess back then.”

Vilas’ grandfather Anthony Adams (a brother to Greasy George) always gave Ed a quarter to hear his favorite tune.

“What was Ed like?” I asked.

Vilas implied that he was withdrawn.

“Mostly he stayed with that fiddle,” he said. “He was good.”

Like most of the other older people in Harts, Vilas knew about the Haley-McCoy killings.

“My grandpaw would tell me them tales but I wouldn’t pay no attention,” he said. “He was telling about them fellers — Sol Adams — going over there and locating them and they went back and captured them. Well, his daddy Anthony tried to waylay them and take them back through here somewhere. They thought they’d come through these hills somewhere but they missed them.”

So, Sol Adams — a 20-year-old nephew to Ben Adams who was often called “Squire Sol” because of his status as an officer of the law — “went over and located Haley and McCoy” in Kentucky after the ambush. Meanwhile, his father Anthony and uncle Ben Adams, organized a gang to recapture them as the Brumfields brought them back through Harts Creek. This seemed strange: why would Sol operate against the interests of his family? And why would he have even been compelled to even become involved since he was a Logan County justice and the crime had occurred in Lincoln County?

Brandon asked Vilas if he knew who had been in the Adams gang and he said, “No, I’ve heard my grandpaw talk but I’ve forgot some of it. They was somebody from down around Hart somewhere. He said they took them over around Green Shoal or over in there somewhere and killed them. Grandpaw said they maybe hit them with axe handles.”

Vilas said his grandfather told him something horrible had happened to most of the men who murdered Haley and McCoy.

“He said just about every one of them that was in on that, something bad happened to them,” he said. “I heard one of them’s own boy killed one of them. And one of them got drowned and my grandpaw said the river wasn’t deep. Said he fell off a horse or something right at the mouth of Hart.”

Of course, Vilas was referring to Paris Brumfield, who was killed by his son Charley in 1891, and to Will Adkins, who drowned at the mouth of Harts Creek on November 23, 1889.

Brandon asked Vilas about “old Ben Adams” and he almost immediately started talking about the old timber business.

“See, that was my great-grandpaw,” he said. “They would build splash dams. They had one right out here. They had them tied some way or the other. And they built them up on Hart there, maybe up on Hoover, and they’d work all winter and put them logs in the creek. And in the spring when them floods come, it would wash all them logs down around Hart and then they’d put them together and raft them on down to Kenova. I guess that was all they had to make a living — timber and farm.”

Ben, of course, made his living in timber. He lived at the mouth of Adams Branch, a little tributary of Trace Fork presently referred to as Still Hollow.

“Over there at what we call Still Hollow, they said he had a still-house there and he had a license to make apple brandy back then,” Vilas said. “And he would go with a wagon everywhere and get apples. They was a log house over there in the mouth of that holler — just down the road here a little ways. When I was a boy the old log house was there, but it rotted down. Just one-story as far as I can remember. The old well’s there. He had some kind of an old store or saloon right there.”

Vilas speculated very little on Ben Adams’ personality, but compared him to his son, Greasy George Adams: “always a likeable fella but seemed like trouble followed him.” He heard that after Ben’s first wife died, he lived with first one woman, then the next. He eventually got into a heap of trouble by murdering a local postman, Jim Martin.

“He killed a fella right over there at the mouth of that hollow,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw said he had some sort of an old store or saloon and he was shooting out the door. Right there in the mouth of that holler. It broke him. Lawyers. Lost everything he had.”

It was rumored that Ben’s and Martin’s trouble had something to do with a woman or a right-of-way.

In Search of Ed Haley 317

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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In that same time frame, Brandon re-visited Tootsie Tomblin, a daughter of Ed Haley’s friend Dood Dalton. She presented him with a reel-to-reel recording of Dood playing the fiddle around 1971. He knew this was an amazing find, somewhat comparable to finding a recording of Laury Hicks, Ed’s fiddling friend in Calhoun County.

Tootsie warned Brandon that the recording wasn’t great because her father had been very old and somewhat crippled in his left hand.

“He was playing with three fingers on his left hand ’cause his fourth finger wouldn’t bend where he’d got it mashed in the mines,” she said.

Brandon sent me a copy of the Dalton recording and when I played it I found that Dood was just what Tootsie said — a man of advanced years whose fingers were tough, stiff and scarred from years of working in the mines — using what sounded like a bow with three hairs and no rosin and a fiddle that had been refinished with floor varnish and strung up with barbed wire and with an action so high you could probably put your shoe under the strings. Still, there he was playing “Wild Horse”, “Cacklin’ Hen”, “Calhoun County Blues”, and “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom”…and doing it so slowly, as if he were trying to communicate to me through the years that he’d been one hell of a fiddler earlier in his life. His final number was an unaccompanied vocal rendition of an old gospel tune. I came away from the recording thinking that yes, by god, Dood Dalton had been a good fiddler in his day.

In Search of Ed Haley 310

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Ferrellsburg, Lincoln County Feud

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A week or so later, Brandon and Billy visited Ward Browning, an older gentleman in Ferrellsburg whose wife was a descendant of Henderson Dingess. Ward said Milt Haley was from “back in the country at the head of Harts toward Mingo County.” The first year of Ed’s life, Milt dipped him repeatedly in water because someone told him it would make a baby healthy; instead, it made him go blind. Milt was hired with Green McCoy to kill the Brumfields. Later, they were captured and taken across the river from Green Shoal and kept under a dogwood bush where they were beaten through the night and then killed around daylight.

Ward said he used to see Ed Haley at Dood Dalton’s home on Big Branch in the late 1930s. Ed would stay around Dood’s place for two or three weeks at a time. He was a “star” — the best around. He and Dood sat on the porch and played for crowds of people in the yard who clapped their hands and had a good time. There was never any trouble. No one took him for granted. He sometimes made up to four dollars a day playing there in hard Depression times.

Ward said Ed carried his fiddle in a case and kept a stick to find his way in the road. He had a great personality and would tell wild stories of his exploits. He drank heavily and was “bad to fight,” but was always sober at Dood’s. Ward said he played “Billy in the Lowground”, “Lop-Eared Mule”, “Arkansas Traveler”, “Soldiers Joy”, “Blackberry Blossom”, and ‘8th of January”.

Brandon was also busy at the Haley-McCoy grave on West Fork. He seemed to be coming around on my idea to exhume Milt Haley and Green McCoy. I’d joked him relentlessly that we might do it only to find it completely empty. He was still against the idea, although his curiosity was getting the better of him.

“As I had been dwelling a lot on the Haley-McCoy grave recently, I finally decided to satisfy my curiosity to a limited extent,” he wrote. “I borrowed a metal detector and raced up to the grave on West Fork at the edge of dark to see what it would pick up (belt buckle, handcuffs, perhaps even the murder weapon). I first tested it on my keys, which I laid upon the ground. Running the detector over them caused a loud buzz. I then placed a pile of leaves over the keys and the detector still buzzed. As a last preliminary test, I laid a thick rock on top of my keys and ran the machine over it and it still registered the buzz. Content that the machine worked fairly well, I then eagerly began gliding it over the grave. Unfortunately, I picked up no real buzz. There was one spot that seemed to repeatedly register a slight buzz but nothing conclusive.”

Brandon signed his letter, “Digging Around (Almost Literally)…”

In Search of Ed Haley 309

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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Throughout the winter 1996, Brandon kept busy interviewing folks around Harts for new Ed Haley-Milt Haley leads. In March, he wrote me about recent developments, including the death of Bill Adkins, Sr. — the old fiddler in Harts. At Bill’s wake, Brandon met Andy Mullins, who had recently moved back to Harts Creek after settling in Michigan in 1952. He was the son of Roxie Mullins.

Andy said, when he was a child, Ed Haley spent summers with his parents. Ed also stayed with George Mullins on Buck Fork, George Baisden (a banjo player) in the head of Hoover Fork, “old John Adams” on main Harts Creek, and Johnny Adams (Ticky George’s son) on Trace Fork. Ed had a big, fat belly. Sometimes, he came with his wife, a quiet woman who would eat dinner and then sing for an hour or so while playing the mandolin. Their daughter “Mona Mae” traveled with them, as did her husband, Wilson Mullins.

Andy didn’t remember much about Ed’s other children. He said Clyde stayed six months at a time on Harts Creek and “wouldn’t work a lick” and “couldn’t stay out of trouble.” He heard that Ralph used to hang upside down from a bridge in Ashland.

When Ed was young, Andy said, he supposedly played a lot of music with George Baisden. Later, he played with Bernie Adams and Claude Martin. Andy remembered that Ed didn’t saw the fiddle — he played smooth — and he was a good singer. His voice was like a bell. When he played music with Bernie and Claude, people gathered in and brought food and booze. Andy never saw Ed drunk, although he would get pretty high. Ed and Bernie were hateful. Somebody might request a tune and Ed would say, “What do you think I am, a steam engine?” — then play it five minutes later. Andy remembered Ed playing “Devil’s Dream”, “Drunkard’s Hell,” “Soldiers Joy” and “Sally Goodin”.

Andy was familiar with Ben Adams, who he said operated a mill-dam at Greasy George’s place on main Harts Creek. Ben used this dam to back the creek all the way up to Henderson Branch. Before turning it loose, he would go and tell people to get out of their homes. His nephew, “old John Adams” (a.k.a. “Long John” or “John Frock”), was the one who went to Dingess and killed the man who had shot Ed’s uncle, Weddie Mullins. Andy said the doctor had this man on a table working on him when John showed up and “wasted” him. John Frock let Ed cut his fingernails one time and he cut them up so badly that his fingers bled. (Mona had told me a similar story, except she thought that Ed had cut Devil Anse Hatfield’s nails.)

In Search of Ed Haley 308

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

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Back in Nashville, I called Wilson Douglas to thank him for being such a good host on my recent trip to West Virginia. I also had a few questions, starting with whether or not Ed played a tune called “Gunboats Through Georgia”.

“Oh, yeah,” Wilson said. “Well, they wasn’t very many, John, that he didn’t play. And he played a danged tune, him and French Carpenter, called the ‘Flatfoot Nash’.”

Wilson paused, then said, “I told you about Ed Haley commending Georgia Slim, didn’t I? He said he believed that Georgia Slim was the best fiddler on some of them there Southern tunes he ever heard. He said nobody could touch him on the ‘Billy in the Lowground’. Now, Georgia Slim — way back there in ’37, ’38 — he went and stayed with Ed Haley a lot in the wintertime.”

Wilson’s memories of Georgia Slim caused me to recall my theory that Ed was a grandfather of the Texas contest fiddling style. I hadn’t thought much about that lately so I called up Charles Gardner, an authority on Texas fiddling. Charles said Georgia Slim had influenced a lot of Texas fiddlers when he played over Dallas radio in the early 1940s. At that time, he was fresh from the Ashland-Charleston area, his playing no doubt filled with Haley and Kessinger licks. It seemed very possible to me that the unfamiliar parts he played on tunes like “Done Gone” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat” were learned from Ed or at least based on his approach.

In Search of Ed Haley 307

18 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Civil War, Ed Haley, Music

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We hadn’t played long until Slim was telling me more about his background.

“I came from a line of Irish fiddlers,” he said. “My dad, his brothers, and his dad…  The old man was so good on the fiddle — he was in the Civil War — my grandfather — that the soldiers all chipped in and bought him a fiddle and he didn’t have to fight. He was from Coalton on the road to Grayson out back of Ashland.”

Slim said his dad played “The Old Lady Carried the Jug Around the Hill” and “Girl With the Blue Dress On”.

Here comes the girl with the blue dress on, the blue dress on, with the blue dress on.

Everybody’s crazy about the girl with the blue dress on…

I asked him if his father played “Catlettsburg” and he said yes, although it was not the same version as what Ed played.

“My dad played it,” Slim said. “He played ‘Birdie’, ‘Tennessee Waggoner’. He got these two fingers cut when he was working at a steel mill and his fingers stayed stiff so he had to play the rest of his life with these two fingers. I don’t remember when he played with all five ’cause I was too small. He played ‘Boatin’ Up Sandy’.”

Every now and then, Slim would tell me something about Ed.

“Every Saturday Ed would go to a county courthouse someplace,” he said. “Believe it or not, he was in Grantsville one time when I was up there, sitting on the steps up there at the courthouse. I walked over, I said, ‘Ed, aren’t you out of place?’ He said, ‘You’re liable to find me anywhere.'”

I asked Slim if he ever saw Ed drunk and he said, “I don’t think I ever saw him sober. He didn’t get too high. Seemed like it give him more pep.”

I asked Slim if he remembered Sweet Georgia Brown coming to see Ed in Ashland and he said, “He was up in Ashland at one time. We called him Brownie. Well, he wasn’t around Ed too much. Ed was a close guy. He didn’t associate with a lot of people. Now, he liked me pretty well…but most fiddle players don’t like fiddle players.”

Speaking of fiddlers, Slim said he had met a lot of them during his lifetime. I wondered if he ever met any as good as Ed and he said, “Clark Kessinger was the closest. I think Clark learned from him. See when Clark made records for Brunswick — they had a studio down in Ashland — Ed wouldn’t play on it. He wouldn’t make records. Didn’t want to. He wouldn’t play over the radio. He said they wasn’t any money in that. He wanted to be somewhere somebody could throw a nickel or dime in that cup. He was very poor. He wasn’t starving to death, but — his wife was blind, too — there was no way that they could make any money. And he had a 17- or 18-year-old boy — he was a good guitar player, but he wouldn’t play with him. I don’t remember what his name was. He was ashamed of his father and mother — to get out in public. Not for any personal reasons…just the fact he could see and they couldn’t.”

Slim began talking about his own career in music, mostly his Depression-era radio work. He mentioned working with or meeting people like Bill and Charlie Monroe and Earl Scruggs and even credited himself with bringing “Orange Blossom Special” to Charleston from Atlanta in October of 1938. He kind of caught us by surprise when he spoke of having played all through the Guyandotte Valley.

“We played personal appearances up and down through there,” Slim said. “Played schools and theaters: Godby Branch School, up on Crawley Creek — one room school — and Hugh Dingess School — it was about an eight-room red brick building — Green Shoal, Wewanta. Harts School, I guess I must have played that school fifteen times. From about ’39 on up to 50-something. Everybody turned out when we played Harts. It was supposed to be the meanest place they was on the Guyan at that time. Came across Big Ugly Creek there. See, it goes from Lincoln County over into Boone. I used to broadcast down in there. I’d say, ‘All you Big Ugly girls be sure to come out and see us now.'”

I asked Slim if he played with any local musicians and he said, “No, we went in and played the show. Once in a while, we’d have amateur contests and they’d come in. Well, we’d have fiddling conventions at big high schools.”

I asked Slim if he ever saw Ed around Harts and he said, “No, not down there. Only time I ever seen Ed was around Ashland and Logan and Chapmanville. He played at the bank in Chapmanville. Chapmanville was 12 miles from Logan.”

Later that night, Brandon and I found some more family photographs in a box at Pat Haley’s. One was of Ella, while others were of Margaret Arms. Margaret was a real “mystery lady”: nobody seemed clear on her relationship to the Haley family. Lawrence Haley had remembered her as a cousin to either Ed or Ella, while Mona called her “Margaret Thomas” and said she lived in Cincinnati.

In Search of Ed Haley 305

14 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Clay County, Ed Haley, Music

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Brandon and I got a good night’s sleep at Pat Haley’s home in Ashland, then took off the next morning to see Wilson Douglas in Clendenin, West Virginia. I wanted to hear more about his memories of Ed, play some music, and go see the old Laury Hicks homeplace. Wilson met us on his porch with Kim Johnson, a banjo player. We all went inside and got settled, where Kim mentioned that Laury first invited Ed to his house after meeting him in St. Albans, near Charleston. Wilson was quick to offer new details about Ed — of a more seedy variety. He said Ed “ran around” a lot with Bernard Postalwait when he was in the area. They usually got drunk and went “women crazy” and stayed gone all night. Hicks apparently had a “wild side,” too. Wilson hinted that he was a moonshiner who sometimes left home on timber jobs…and never showed up.

We wasted little time in taking off to see some of Ed’s old stomping grounds in Clay and Calhoun Counties. There was a slight drizzle, just enough to wet everything.

Our first stop was the Hicks homeplace, which had been overtaken by weeds on my previous visit in 1994. The weeds were gone this time, so we got out of the car and maneuvered through the rotting remains of an outhouse, chicken coop, cellar base, parts of an old fence, and scattered boards — all damp and colored dark brown due to the light rain dropping down around us.

It was a far cry from the “old days” when (according to Ugee Postalwait) the family had farmed corn, wheat and cane all the way back up the mountain to the head of Hog Run Hollow. Gone were the apple and peach orchards. Gone were the gardens down by the creek (now taken in by the paved road). And, most obviously, gone was the old Hicks home, the last of four houses built on the site (the final one having been constructed in 1936).

We soon made our way up the hill to the cemetery, where Brandon took pictures. I just kind of stared at Laury’s grave — picturing Ed playing there after Laury’s death in 1937.

As we came off the hill, Wilson said Hicks was rumored to have died from “some bad cases of VD.”

Later that day, Wilson showed us Clay, the seat of government for Clay County. This was the place where Ed Haley arrived by train from Charleston enroute to the home of Laury Hicks. Lawrence Haley once told me about his father walking from Clay to Arnoldsburg, a town some thirty miles away. Brandon had found this great article titled “Old-Time Fiddlers Will Gather At Clay Saturday” from a 1921 edition of the Lincoln Republican.

Clay, W.Va., Jan. 10 — Elaborate preparations are being made in the little city of Clay for the old-time fiddlers’ contest which will be held on Saturday night, January 22. An attendance surpassing anything ever held in Clay is expected, and the hospitable citizens of this town have appointed a committee to look after the welfare of its guests. Similar contests have been held in various other sections of West Virginia this winter, but they cannot even compare to the one which will be held in Clay, it is predicted. Old-time fiddlers from far and near are coming to compete, and, if possible, carry off the honors of the evening.

Among some of the celebrated old-time fiddlers who will be here is “Jack” McElwaine of Erbacon, in Webster county. “Jack” has played the fiddle for more than fifty years, and between times has been justice of the peace, preached the gospel and practiced law. He learned to play under Saul Carpenter, the most famous old-time fiddler of them all, and who played himself out of Camp Chase during the Civil war. Another fiddler equally famous is “Edin” Hammons, who hails from the head of Wiliams river, and whose sole occupation all through life has been hunt, trap and play the fiddle. “Edin” has killed more bears, deer and played the fiddle more than any other man on Williams River.

It is said that Senator William E. Chilton and Colonel Bob Carr of Charleston have been given invitations to attend the contest and compete with these old-time fiddlers.

Several local celebrities are expected to enter the contest, and the old mountaineer fiddlers are looking forward to this part of the contest with great pleasure and saying “the city fellers will have to fiddle some to beat them.” No complete list of the fiddlers who enter the contest has been made public, but some fifteen or twenty are expected. Ben Friend, Ed Williams, Luther Carder and “Bill” Stutler, men who have been winning prizes in other contests, will be there.

People of Clay and surrounding country are looking forward to this event with great anticipation and pleasure. The last contest of the kind was held at Richwood, Thursday night of last week, and fully 200 persons were unable to get into the theater where it was held.

There are very few of the real old time fiddlers who play the old mountain tunes living today, and within a very short time there will be none left and no one to take their place. The younger generation has neither talent nor desire for this kind of music. At any rate, one can not find a young man of today who can play the fiddle in the “good old-fashioned way.”

Clay, I found, was a small shell of a town with a nice old courthouse sitting high on the hill. There was the typical arrangement of buildings: sagging old businesses hinting at lost prosperity, a small bank, dollar stores, a car dealership, a post office, and a Gino’s restaurant. No red lights and basically one two-lane thoroughfare through town. There was a hotel with the weekly newspaper office headquartered beneath where, I was told, you could go in late and help yourself to a key and then pay for your room the next morning on your way out. After passing through town and crossing the Pisgah Bridge, we spotted an old section of residences and a community church. The track bed was still visible but the railroad was long gone.

In Search of Ed Haley 303

11 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music, Stiltner

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After the feud, Cain Adkins settled on Laurel Creek in Wayne County and never returned to Harts. Not long afterward, he began suffering from some type of lingering illness.

“Grandpaw, he played a fiddle,” Daisy said. “They had him to play the fiddle on his deathbed. Somebody came in and they wanted to hear a song and he played it for him. He said, ‘They ain’t no harm in a fiddle. If they’s any harm, it’s when no one plays it.’ I’ve heard Mom tell the last song he played, but I don’t know what it was he played. Mom said it made him feel better.”

Cain died of Brights Disease in 1896.

His widow Mariah lived many more years.

“Grandmaw was a good person — she went to church every Sunday. The last ten years she went blind and stayed with Mom. Mom waited on her.”

She died in 1931.

It took Spicie years to forgive the Brumfields for killing Green. Even after remarrying Goble Fry (her first cousin) in 1893, she was unable to cope with Green’s death and always cried when recounting the tale of his murder. For years, her bitterness kept her from joining the church.

“She felt like he hadn’t done nothing to be killed for ’cause she loved him better than anything,” Daisy said. “Before she was baptized, my brother Sherman had went off to work — him and a bunch of boys — and they was all telling what church their mother belonged to and Sherman said to Mom, ‘Mom, I had to tell them you didn’t belong to the church.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I can’t forgive the Brumfields.’ He said, ‘You can’t forget it, but you got to forgive them or you’ll go to the same place where they did.’ I heard him say that. I was a young woman.”

These were apparently inspiring words, because Spicie was baptized soon afterwards and formed a gospel quartet, “The McCoy Time Singers.” Her son, Sherman McCoy, was a key member.

“Brother Sherman could play any kind of instrument, but banjo is what he played mostly,” Daisy said. “He played all kinds of pretty tunes on the banjo that wasn’t gospel. And when he was on WCMI he wanted people to write in and tell him to play the gospel music, but he had to play the one that got the most requests and he didn’t get very much requests for the gospel. But Mom and Sherman sung them gospel songs on there. They had a program on WCMI one time.”

Daisy said the only known recordings of the McCoy Time Singers had been destroyed years ago.

“They made records of their quartet singing and they peeled up. Got damp. Monroe, my brother, got some and even wrapped them in cloth and they still peeled.”

I wanted to know more about Sherman McCoy, so I got out my banjo and played a little bit for Daisy. She said he played a lot with his uncle, Winchester Adkins (one of the best fiddlers in Wayne County), and a guitar player named Oscar Osborne.

“Brother Sherman was one of the best banjo players I ever heard,” Daisy said. “I’ve heard them on television but I’ve never heard anything to beat Brother Sherman. He played a guitar and taught music lessons. He played all kinds of jigs. Did you ever play ‘The Indian Girl’? He didn’t like to play that one very much because he had to tune it different but that was the prettiest tune I ever heard on the banjo. It sounded like he had more than ten fingers.”

I asked Daisy about Sherman playing with Ed Haley and she said, “He played music with Ed Haley and they played in Catlettsburg.”

That’s all she knew about it but I wondered just how well they actually knew each other. Was it possible that Ed named his oldest child Sherman Luther Haley after Sherman McCoy? I could just picture them loafing together as young bachelors.

Daisy said Green McCoy’s other son, Green Jr., was a singing instructor. She remembered the first time he came into contact with a guitar.

“Uncle Cain, he played a guitar,” she said. “He come down one time and wanted Green to see his guitar. Green only seen that guitar one time and worked a week and got him a guitar and tuned it up and was playing on it. He was gifted.”

What happened to him?

Faye said, “Uncle Green, he hadn’t been dead but I’d say about eight or ten years. He played a guitar good.”

Daisy said Green’s son Luther plays the guitar on the radio in the Columbus-Chillicothe area.

“Uncle Green said he was absolutely the best he ever heard,” she said.

She didn’t know much about Luther or have any recordings of him but had a videocassette tape of Green Jr. picking the guitar and singing in 1975. (I couldn’t help but note that Green Jr. and Ed Haley both had sons named Luther.)

Spicie’s children by Goble Fry also were talented musicians, hinting at a musical strain in her genetics as well.

“Uncle Monroe was a Fry — that was Mom’s brother — and Harkins — they both played music,” Faye said. “But now, Uncle Monroe could play, I guess, about any type of instrument. I remember him playing ‘Salty Dog’ one time.”

Daisy really bragged on her brother Harkins Fry, a music teacher and songwriter. He wrote one gospel song called “Time Has Made A Change”, which Daisy and Faye sang for us:

Time has made a change in the old homeplace.

Many of my friends have gone away,

Some never more in this life I shall see.

Time has made a change in me.

Time has made a change in the old homeplace.

Time has made a change in each smiling face,

And I know my friends can plainly see

Time has made a change in me.

In my childhood days I was well and strong.

I could climb the hillside all day long,

But I’m not today what I used to be.

Time has made a change in me.

When I reach my home in that land so fair.

Meet my friends awaiting me over there.

Free from toil and pain I shall ever be.

Time has made a change in me.

Dr. Charles Wolfe and The Devil’s Box

02 Friday May 2014

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Charles Wolfe Autograph

One day in July 1998, John Hartford and I met Dr. Wolfe for lunch in Nashville. I made sure to ask Dr. Wolfe, if he wouldn’t mind, to autograph my copy of his book. He was a pleasant man and inundated with information about country music history.

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Dr. Wolfe’s “The Devil’s Box” remains the authoritative account of Southern fiddling.

In Search of Ed Haley 300

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud

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We next inquired about Green McCoy. We were particularly curious about why he left Kentucky and settled in Harts.

“I don’t know why he went up there,” Daisy said. “He was just playing music and started running around, I guess.”

Green and Spicie had a love for music in common.

Daisy said her mother “always liked music” and sung “from the time she was a little girl.” She “could sing any part of music — all four parts” — and “could play a banjo and she was left-handed. Played pretty good. She said she could play a dulcimer.”

Green was Spicie’s “first boyfriend” and she was crazy for him, even though she knew very little about his past.

“Grandma Spicie, she called him Will,” Faye said. “His name was William Greenville.”

“She didn’t even know Green McCoy was married till after she was engaged to him,” Daisy said of her mother. “He come up there with his brother and pretended to be single. Aunt Angeline, I think, was the one who found it out. And after Grandmaw found it out, she tried to keep Mom from marrying him, but Mom loved him so good she couldn’t believe it. They tried to keep Grandmaw from marrying him, but that just made her love him that much more.”

She “loved him so good she went ahead and married him anyhow.”

Green and Spicie settled in one of the small shacks on the Adkins farm. Faye said she’d heard that Green “would go off for a couple of weeks for a time,” then return home to his young wife, who always ran out to hug him. He’d tease her by running through the yard or “maybe around the house a couple of times — make her chase him. She was thrilled to death to see him come back.”

We wondered if perhaps Green was traveling between wives or playing music abroad, since Daisy said he never had any occupation aside from music.

I asked if he was a drinking man and Faye said, “If he had a been, Grandma wouldn’t a told it ’cause that woulda looked bad on him. Grandma Spicie told Green that she would swim the briny ocean for him.”

Okay…so what about Milt Haley?

Daisy said he was a good friend to Green and her mother. I asked if she thought we would ever find that picture of them together and she said, “No, I don’t. Mom kept it in her trunk. My niece has got it but she’s sick and got a house full of junk like I have and will never find it. She got Mom’s pictures. It was a little tintype snapshot of him and Green McCoy standing together. I think he had a hat on — seemed like both of them had a hat on in that picture. That was when they was playing music, but they didn’t have no instruments with them.”

I got a sheet of paper and tried to do a sketch, asking questions like, “Do you remember if he had bushy eyebrows?” or “Thin face, you reckon?”

I was pretty desperate.

Daisy kept insisting, “I can’t remember. I can’t tell you how somebody looks.”

Brandon asked if Milt and Green knew each other in Kentucky, before their move to Harts.

“No,” Daisy said. “Not until he come up there. I don’t know, now, where Milt Haley come from. They played music together.”

I wondered if Milt was the best fiddler between the two and Daisy said, “I don’t know which one was the best.”

“But Grandma thought Green was the best, didn’t she?” Faye said to her mother.

“Oh yeah,” Daisy said. “That was her husband. I never heard her say nothing against Haley.”

I asked if Spicie ever mentioned the names of any tunes that Green played and she said, “She might’ve said some of them. One of them I think was ‘Fire on the Mountain’.”

I got real excited hearing that and asked if she would remember more tunes if I played for her.

“No, I wouldn’t recognize…,” she said. “I never heard fiddles very much. My brothers had them there some, but they never played fiddles too much. They had guitars and banjos and pianos and organs and other stuff.”

I gave it a try but all I got when I played Ed’s version of “Fire on the Mountain” was, “That’s all right, but I don’t feel like dancing.”

We all cracked up and Faye warned us about her mother, who sat stone-faced in her chair.

“Sometimes she’s a smarty,” she said.

In Search of Ed Haley 298

28 Monday Apr 2014

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As Abe and I fiddled the afternoon away, Roger Cooper and John Lozier showed up. In ensuing conversation, John mentioned to Abe that he didn’t remember his father, Jim. Abe said it was because his dad had died young.

“My uncle raised me from seven year old and raised Morris Allen from three months old,” he said.

Which uncle?

“Uncle John and Uncle Henry raised me,” he said.

I said to Abe, “How many fiddling Keiblers were there all told?”

“Well, there weren’t many — just that one generation,” he said. “John — that was the oldest — Charley — that was the next one — and my dad and Sam. Them was the four fiddlers.”

His mind was starting to pull out great memories.

“Grandpa wouldn’t allow them to bring a fiddle into the house to saw around on and learn and they got a hold of an old fiddle and took it out in the cornfield. And the three brothers, he kept seeing them going out and he told Grandma, ‘Them boys are into something. I’m gonna follow them and see what they’re into.’ So he goes out there and Uncle John — that was the best fiddler — he was a playing and my dad was a dancing and he said, ‘Well now, John, you can bring your fiddle into the house.’ He had learnt to play it then pretty good.”

I asked Abe where he first heard Ed play and he said, “Greenup, Kentucky. Up here at the county seat. He played around the courthouse there and people donated him money. He had a cup on the neck of his fiddle and they’d drop five-dollar bills in it. When that old mill was a running and whiskey was in, he’d come around there to that mill on payday and maybe take a thousand dollars away from there. I was about eighteen years old when I heard him. He was a good fiddler. He could play ‘Birdie’ and all that. Played it in C or G either one. He played and sung a lot of songs — ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’. He could play anything.”

Abe said he usually saw Ed at the courthouse on Labor Day or the Fourth of July. Ed always wore a hat and was dressed in a suit. He placed the fiddle under his chin, pulled a long bow and ran his fingers all up and down the neck of the fiddle. Abe said he “could play anything” but he only remembered “Grey Eagle”, “Big Indian Hornpipe”, “Portsmouth Airs”, and “Turkey in the Straw”. His wife normally sang while he played the fiddle, although he sang “Pretty Polly”. Abe never got to talk much to him because the crowds kept him so busy playing the fiddle.

I asked Abe if he ever played with Asa Neal and he said, “No, I never did play none with Asa but he was a pretty good fiddler. I remember when we first moved to Portsmouth in ’23, he couldn’t play nothing on the old Blues, but he got to be a pretty good fiddler. He used slip notes.”

In Search of Ed Haley 296

26 Saturday Apr 2014

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A little later, I met John Lozier at Portsmouth. He was a real ball of energy. It was hard to believe that he was in his late eighties. I just sat back and listened to him talk about Ed.

“The first time I ever saw Ed Haley he was sitting on the street in a little old stool of a thing — him and his wife — had a little boy with him. They always kept a little boy with them — one of the kids that would lead them here and there and yander. And I didn’t know this but a fella by the name of Charlie Mershon was there and the Mershons are all fiddlers. They live over here in Ohio somewhere. And Charlie went home and told his dad, ‘I heard a man that could out-fiddle you.’ He went over and he had to take his hat off to Ed. But Ed had long, slim fingers like a woman and he played so soft you just had to listen. He was a great fiddler.”

I asked John to tell me about playing with Ed at the Portsmouth YMCA.

“A fella by the name of Dinky Coffman was the head of the entertainment committee at the N&W over here in Portsmouth,” he said. “Well, whenever Dink Coffman would want us to have a little shindig or whatever you want to call it he would take us over in the shops at the N&W at noon. They was about seven hundred people worked over there at one time. And nickels and dimes — whatever they could get — that’s the way Ed Haley made his living. It had to be a rough life. Of course, back in the twenties you make a dollar, honey, you could wrap it ’round a corncob and be nigger rich. And the last time I played with Ed Haley was at the YMCA at the C&O Russell yards.”

I asked John how Ed looked back then and he said, “Ed was a little old short pot-bellied feller. He had an old brown hat on as well as I can remember and just an old brown coat and a pair of britches. He didn’t dress like he was going out on vaudeville stage or anything. His wife would take Braille with her and read Braille for a little extra entertainment. She played a banjo-uke — eight string, short neck — but she just played chords. Mostly me and her would play and she would second after me. One time, we went up to the Russell yards at the YMCA up there and she accompanied me on the piano. I never knew any of the kids.”

John asked to see my fiddle, so I lifted it out of the case and reached it to him. He said to his wife, “Oh, Lord. Look at this. Isn’t that done pretty? My granddad made fiddles and he used three things: a wood chisel, a pocketknife, and a piece of window glass. All he bought was the fingerboard and the apron. And he made little wood clamps and wedges. He wouldn’t let me pick up the fiddle — afraid I’d drop it and break the neck out of it. And I started playing old fiddle tunes on a harp.”

Not long after that, John pulled out his harmonica and played “Devil’s Dream”, “Portsmouth Airs”, “Birdie”, “Girl I Left Behind Me”, and “Ragtime Annie”.

I joined in every now and then, which prompted him to say things like, “You’re putting something extra in there,” or “You missed a note. See that?”

To call him feisty would be a huge understatement.

At one point, he said, “I’m trying to tell you something. You’re gonna be here all day. This is my day.”

A little later he said, “I don’t know if you know what you’re doing or not, but you’re putting a few little slip notes in there. You put more notes in that than what Ed would have put in it. You’ve been listening to Clark Kessinger records.”

Uh-oh.

John opened up a whole new facet of our conversation by mentioning Clark Kessinger, who he’d heard play one time at the West End Jubilee on Market Street in Portsmouth.

“Clark Kessinger was a hard loser in a contest,” John said. “If he lost, he’d just stomp and carry on something awful.”

Clark came to Portsmouth and played a lot because of the great number of musicians in the town during the Depression.

“I come into Portsmouth about the time that Roy Rogers left here,” John said. “Now he had a cousin that was a better guitar player than he was: Chet. He had a little neck like a turkey. And him and Dominique Bennett, Clayt Fry, Elmer Lohorn… Elmer Lohorn was the only man I ever seen that played ‘companion time’ on the guitar. It was a double time — everything he done was doubled. And Harry Frye was a fine tenor banjo player. We had one guitar player by the name of Kid Lewis — was a smart-alec — and he could play classical stuff. But they just sat around and played cards and drank moonshine and got good. Asa Neal was, I’d say, our champion fiddler around here. Asa Neal bought ever record that Clark Kessinger ever put out.”

At that moment, John Simon, a local folklorist, showed up with Roger Cooper, a Buddy Thomas protégé. I got Roger to play the fiddle while I seconded him on my banjo. John Lozier jumped in when we weren’t playing something “just right.” At some point, Jason Lovins, a local newspaper reporter, dropped in with a camera and asked a few questions. He promised to plug my interest in Ed’s life in the Community Common.