Can't fathom actually sitting at a table and visiting with someone of Joni's caliber. I read the various posts and hear of the brushes with fame and have no such stories of my own to tell. As a teenager my mother would force me to attend every function that the youth of our local church held. I was rather the oddball and quite the disciple of Janis Joplin so you can imagine what was going on and happening to me in a small, religious, sports based, town in the Texas Panhandle. I decided that if they thought I was wierd, then I would show them just how wierd I could be. Anyway, I was a junior in high school and finally was beginning to find some kind of niche and had found the forensics department and there, found some folks who were not the norm for the area. Was beginning to expand my mind a little. Sadly, none of them belonged to my church group and off my mother sent me on this church excursion to the mountains of New Mexico. Me, mutliple jocks and jockettes, the young preacher who cared for no one except the jocks and jockettes, and the chauffeurs of the trip, the mothers and fathers of the jocks and jockettes. There I was, with my Janis Joplin t-shirt on and my hair as wild as I could possibly make it look, sitting in the back seat of this car. Careening though the mountains at break neck speed, I looked out the window and dreamed and wished that I was not there, or did not exist at all. Needless to say, it didn't matter, for there was no one in the car that wanted to talk to me anyway and they didn't, for the entire 4 hours it took to get there. The second night we were there they loaded us up into the different cars and took us to a small club. It was apparently not the in season and the club looked closed. There was of course no alcohol going on as we filed in. There was a young man on the stage. He had this huge book that looked like something that one made in junior high with different colored papers in it and hanging out of it. Don't remember exactly how it was bound but in a strange fashion. He took up his guitar and sang songs for us, at times stopping and looking up tunes in that book. I, being the misfit that I was and not very evolved and not wanting to hear anything that wasn't what I was used to, didn't give him a chance and did not enjoy his music, that he "played real good for free." So full of my own angst with my life and the trip and them, I don't think I even listened to half of it. Anyway, an hour or so later, he was finished. We left. The next week I was staying up late to watch the Midnight Special on t.v. and they were scrolling through the folks who would be on that night. His, the guy, picture came up and they announced his name "Michael Murphy". I thought "that's him". Soon after the song Wildfire was a hit. Never cared for it but really liked "what's forever for" that he did years later. This pales in comparison to the stories I have read here but is my closest brush with celebrity.
Mack
