I was sad to have to leave Weiser a few days early but I was also grateful for the time that I did have there. I used to never miss a year at Weiser when I lived in Missoula, then we moved over here and now I'm only 3 hours away instead of 7. I haven't made it there a single year now. Crazy! What's up with that! Well I guess it's the retirement thing and wanting to have the grand kids spend more summer time with us which has limited my time at Weiser cause I can't watch kids and have any fun playing music. They're just a little young to take and let them run loose quite yet but soon they'll be able to do that.
This year though I thought ahead and didn't take any of the younger grand kids until after Weiser week. We have been on the road for a month doing all sorts of fun things with our grand kids and you can read about those in other posts but the last part of this trip was all fun bluegrass things.
Grass Valley was so awesome and the jamming was incredible. I made new friends, Jeanie and Susie meeting them on the first evening that I was there so each night I'd head right back to their camp and jam with them again.
I played a lot of fiddle there and a lot of mandolin too so this was especially fun since I've been playing so much guitar in the last few years. I've been working on my bluegrass technique on my fiddle and it was just way fun to experiment with playing it in a bluegrass jam circle. So anyway that was our week at Grass Valley, hot weather, hot bands, and so much fun for me. I loved seeing the fun vendors that I have gotten to know down there too and even Jerry Logan had a booth again this year so I bought two more of his original bluegrass necklace pieces too. I already have one of his which is a mandolin peg head necklace made out of silver with a black onyx stone in it which I bought more than 10 years ago right there at Grass Valley too. So anyway he had a booth there again and I got to visit with him and catch up with all what both of us have been up to. I ended up buying two more of his necklaces so that now I'll be able to interchange this one I've been wearing constantly this last 10 years. I also was able to buy 3 new/old fiddles from a fiddle luthier guy who always has a booth down there too. I was looking for some smaller sized fiddles for my students who can't afford to buy one, and was excited to be able to get 3 German made ones for a total price on all of them of $240 the normal cost of just one fiddle.
All of these things added up to make my Grass Valley week so fantastic.
After Grass Valley we had a long driving day up to Weiser Idaho for the National Fiddle Competition week of fun. I needed to get back home here to get our place ready for hosting a woman's retreat out here in about 10 days, and also my big family reunion and bluegrass concert day that I do here each year over the week of the 4th of July. Lot's to do to get ready for these, but John was really great to let me get in 3 days at Weiser jamming with friends.
I was really surprised to see several of the people who I'd jammed with down in Grass Valley up there at Weiser too. Our daughter Gina and her new husband own a business where they go to fairs and such and sell food. They were camped in the LDS church's parking lot which borders the city park in Weiser and so they suggested that we could park there too and that's what we decided to do. I was good with it as long as I had access to the truck to go jam as much as I wanted to and it worked out just fine saving us $60 too. It was also really good since we had the grand kids, Cortney, Tori, and Tanner with us as and it gave them things to do while there. They could walk up and go swimming just a couple of blocks away or they could browse the vendors booths of which both things they did a lot during the 3 days we were there. I had such a great time getting to see my Weiser friends and play a little music with them again. I just love all those people so much and only a fellow bluegrasser can appreciate and understand how those friendships run so deep. When I first got there my good friend Richard saw me and gave me this great big hug saying how glad he was to see me there. It was a wonderful welcome to Weiser hug and we visited for over an hour just catching up on things.
The Limehouses's were with us at Weiser too and even though I'd always talked so much about it they had never been there or seen it. They stayed an extra day and let me take them on a grand tour of everything so we got to see a guy re-hair a fiddle bow, and I got to show them the Institute area where we all jam an usually camp too. I was excited that they didn't just hurry off and not get to see all the things that make Fiddle week at Weiser such a special thing for all of us who get to come each year. They got a real feel to it all and had a nice relaxed day of walking and seeing it all. I had a fun time showing them all the ropes and introducing them to my friends too.
Last night, my last evening at Weiser, I got into a jam with a guy who was playing a musical saw. He could make that thing sing and another lady, myself and one guy on the bass plus two of us on fiddles made up the jam. It was a great little jam and suddenly I turned around to see standing behind me a lady who I met at Weiser 20 years ago, Julia Milleson. She was standing there listening and holding her fiddle not realizing that it was me jamming. Now Julia has had a pretty hard time of things these past few years. First of all she lived with and took care of her aged mother until she passed away at almost 100 years old and then shortly after her mom passed on Julia got cancer real bad and had heart trouble to boot. She was so weak that she had to move in with her son until she could recoup, but she got better and is looking great now. She told me that she's been cancer free for a year now and that she's living in her own home once again. It was fun to see her. I think it's been close to 10 years since we last saw each other but I do keep in touch with her on the computer here, and she's in her mid to upper 80's herself now! So it was just so good to get to see her and doing so well too. She got out her fiddle and played with us for about an hour.
Then later that evening I wandered over and jammed with JD Webb and his wife Judy for the rest of the evening. Suddenly about 1AM here walks up Helen Smith. She'd just gotten there and her husband drove their nice 5th wheeler up there for her then plans to come back and get her this Saturday. I let her use my guitar since I was playing fiddle and then we got to play together too this way.
Finally at around 2:30 I turned it in and drove back down to our camper where I cuddled into bed with John content at the wonderful few days I'd had to be bluegrassin it, but sad that it was ending, but happy that I was going to be coming home too.
I always enjoy browsing the Weiser gift shop where sometimes I find the coolest souveniers of Weiser week. One year I bought a banjo shaped cribbage board, one year blank note cards with cool vintage pictures of old time fiddlers on them, and this year I found a super cool wooden plaque where someone wood burned a little girl wearing chaps playing a guitar on it and then it says Get along little doggie all wood burned into it. They used old saddle straps on it for decoration and then they nailed horse shoe nails across the bottom of it making it a perfect necklace holder for me. When I asked the price and was told $20 for this nice 20 X 12 inch plaque I was shocked that it was so reasonable and I knew that it was going to be this years souvenier and so I grabbed it. They had about 3 others that were each uniquely their own design but this one is the one I liked best. On the back is wood burned into it Weiser National Old Time Fiddlers Contest 2012 which is their 60th aniversary. It's very fun and useful too. The wood is off an old barn making it a really fun little piece and it was such a fun find. I also ran into an old aquaintance there named David who wrote a song about all the things we experience each year at Weiser week and he'd written this several years ago when Weiser was in it's hey day so it has all the cool memories of those years for us. The year that he'd written it he would play his guitar and sing it and this one guy recorded it live at our jam, then later put it onto a cassette of which I'd bought way back then. Suddenly here he was sitting there again this year and so I asked him if he might have that song recorded onto a cd so that I could get it and put it onto my ipod. Well he had some other friends there who had downloaded that jam session recording onto their computer and so upon visiting with him I found out that he would ask his wife to burn it onto a cd for me. I was so lucky to get that and I count it as another prized souvenier from this week too so I'm going to get it onto my ipod for fun memories as I listen to it. I was sitting and playing along as he sang it and it was recorded so this is a very special song and luckily I got it again.
Today as we drove in and had 10 kids waving and smiling shouting welcome home to us just made an end to this perfect trip feel so good to us.
We not only swam in the pond earlier today, but we also had our first night time swim in the pond tonight. It was pretty fun and at first we were seeing bats flying over head of us, then suddenly more and more came in and we even had some pretty huge ones of a different variety come in too. One scared me a bit as he sort of dive bombed some insects right above my head. Grass Valley pictures.....
No comments:
Post a Comment