Billy recommended that we visit Bob Dingess, a man of advanced age who was related to and personally remembered almost everyone in Ed’s story. His father was Dave Dingess, a younger brother to Hollena Brumfield, while his mother was a daughter to Anthony Adams. His first wife was a daughter to Charley Brumfield, while his current wife was Robert Martin’s niece. Bob was a close cousin to Bob Adkins and Joe Adams, as well as many of the Brumfields. He was a fine old man — a retired schoolteacher and elementary principal — who could probably tell us more about Harts Creek history than any one alive.

We drove to Bob’s small white house, which sat just below the mouth of Smoke House on Big Harts Creek, and knocked at his back door, where a nurse met us. She knew Billy and invited us inside, through the kitchen and into a dark stuffy living room. There, we met Bob and his wife. Bob was bundled up in a light black jacket, oblivious to the enormous August heat. A somewhat tall man, he had an alertness to his movements that was surprising and enviable. He was very friendly. We all sat down on couches to talk about Ed Haley. I was sure that Bob’s heater was running; in no time at all, my sinuses were ready to explode.

When Billy told him that we were interested in finding out about Ed Haley, he said, “You have to give me a little time on this. My memory jumps on me. I’m no spring chicken and I have to think.”

But it was obvious that his mind was sharp as a tack when he started telling about his memories of Ed.

“Now Ed Haley, he left here after so long,” Bob said. “He went to Kentucky and he married there. He had a blind woman and she played the mandolin and he played the violin and they had a lot of the meanest boys you ever saw. I first saw him in 1918, during the First World War. Well on Saturday I’d go to Ferrellsburg to haul groceries. That’s the only way to get them. No bridge at Hart. And bless your heart, here that man and them four children come off’n that train, and that old woman, and I got a wagon load of groceries and set them on it and them boys fought and that old man he just slapped and knocked and kicked among them. And the old man, he wouldn’t tell them nothing — he was blind — and she couldn’t tell them nothing, either. And I finally got them up here at the house, and when I got them there Mom made me unload the wagon and says, ‘Get ’em away from here.’ And we took them up yonder to old man John Adams’ then, and let them go. They stayed a month up there.”

I asked how Ed dressed.

“Well, he was all right now, boys,” Bob said. “Don’t worry about him. He took care of everything. He’d laugh and talk, too. You’d think he could see. After you’d get him located and get him in the house, you know, he could get up and walk about through the house.”

Bob didn’t think Ed was the best fiddler he ever heard.

“Nah,” he said. “He couldn’t play this fancy music like Bill Monroe and them played. The old-time fiddle, he was good…old-time music. ‘Comin’ Around the Mountain’. He had a dozen songs.”

Bob said Ed used to play at the old pie suppers on Harts Creek.

“See, I was born in ’04, and I went to these frolics where they had pie suppers and socials and all these gals gathered and these men,” he said. “About every weekend the girls’d go to one home and they’d kill chickens and bake cakes and bake pies and everything and they’d auctioneer them off. If you had a pretty girl, buddy you’d better have a little pocketbook because somebody’s gonna eat with her and knock you out. Mother always give me a little money and I’d just pick me out one and get her. Yeah, planned all week, the girls would. We did that once a week unless they was some special occasion. We’d start at Bill Brumfield’s down yonder. From Bill’s, we’d come to Andy Thompson’s, come from Andy Thompson we went to Rockhouse to Uncle Wash Farley’s. Uncle Sol over here, he wouldn’t let them have it but just once in a while. Mom would let them have it about every three or four months up here. But on up the hollow up yonder it was a regular thing. Them days is gone, though. You couldn’t have that now. No fighting, no quarreling, everybody got along happy.”

I wanted to know more about Ed.

“Ed Haley, here’s what they’d do,” Bob said. “They’d put him and her on a mule and he’d be in front and she’d ride astraddle behind and hold him. And somebody else’d have to carry their musical instruments, see? And when they got them up there then they had to lead them and get them in the house and get them located. And somebody’d slip around and give him a big shot of liquor and her and they’d say, ‘All right, old-man, let ‘er go.’ ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’, boy here she’d go. He’d sing it. He was a good singer. And his old woman, she didn’t look like she was very much, but she was a singer. She was a little woman, blind. But she’d sing right with him. Yeah, ‘Turkey in the Straw’. Ah, that ‘Grapevine twist,’ man, ‘circle eight and all get straight.’ Ah man, them girls had them old rubber-heeled shoes and they’d pop that floor. It was an all-night affair. He’d play a while, then he’d rest a while, then he’d start again. Along about midnight, they’d drink that liquor in them half a gallon jugs. You know, I was a boy and I wasn’t allowed to drink too much but now them old-timers they would drink that liquor. ‘Bout one o’clock, she’d start again, and when the chickens was a crowing and daylight was coming still they were on the floor. They would lay all day and sleep.”