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going to be a craftsman, and he sort of became my helper. Up until he died, he still came to me whe n he needed something done.
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When was the first time you heard a dulcimer? I don't really know. I had a cousin, Mac who was a craftsman, that used to come to our house. My dad had bought a lathe, that I still use up in the shop, when Sears first started selling power tools in 1935. Mac and I dug a hole and built a basement and set up the power tools that my dad had, and Mac fooled around with those tools until he figured out what he was doing, then he taught me what he knew. That was the only forma l training I ever had in woodworking. Mac was in the Southern Highlands Guild, and used to set up at shows. I used to go to the shows with him and help in his booth. I would stand all day and turn salad bowls and sell them for twenty cents. In one of those shows I got acquainted with Homer Ledford.
Was that the beginning of the dulcimer story? I guess so. When Mama Maude and I moved back to this area in 1962, my youngest son, Steven, started going with me to the craft shows and he met Homer Ledford. He would stay in Homer's booth while Homer went out for lunch . Home r taught Steven to play and then Homer let him have a kit. He brought the kit home and I put it toge ther for him, after calling Homer a hundred times on the phone. It turned out so well that the other kids wanted a dulcimer too. So I called Homer and told him to send me another kit. He told me no, that I should make my own. I told him that I had already glued that one up so he sent me anothe r one for pattern. I used the kit he sent me for a pattern and made my own. Every year when we would go to the craftsman fair, Homer would show me what I was doing wrong and help me get my dulcimers going. So, Homer Ledford was
my introduction to the dulcimer. This happened in the early 60's. The first one I actually made on my own was in 1967. Each one seemed to be a little easier than the last one. The kids used to swap them for things such as an au toharp, guitar, and banjo. My da ughter Jane swapped one for a little horse, which meant we had to build a fence and a barn. I finally said, " If you have to feed it, you can't have it."
How did you get into selling dulcimers? The fellow Jane got the horse from knew of somebody at Elk Park that sold dulcimers. I gave him o ne to take up there to Harold Winte r who was running the place. He was married to Margare t Winter, who was a great dulcime r player and wrote some books on playi ng the dulcimer. Haro ld liked my work and started selling them for me, and sold three or four hundred dulcimers for me.
After Harold died , I joined the Southern Highlands Guild and sold through their wholesale program.
How did you get into the Foxfire 3 book? I ran into E liot Wigginton (editor of the Foxfire books) on the street in Clayton a nd he asked me to build a dulcimer a nd write an article to go into the book on home made fo lk instruments. I told him that I would. After a couple of years, I ran into him agai n and he said that he needed that dulcimer and article now. I went back home and made the
dulcime r, and it took me weeks to write the article. I took the dulcimer and article to Eliot. I told him to have one of the kids rewrite. the article. They put the article in Foxfire 3 just exactly as I had written it.
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