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Dad bought his fiddle.

At that time the local Baptist Church frowned on dancing and would “withdraw fellowship” from anyone dancing in public or musicians playing for a dance. “We played for Entertainments, and if someone got up and wanted to dance, we couldn't stop them,” he told me. Plus, he said, he had never joined the church and didn't much care what they thought. That, I thought, was a funny opinion to be held by a future Baptist minister and President of a Baptist College. The old Holloway home disappeared decades ago, but the kitchen has held on and was probably mistaken for a free-standing home. There probably weren't more than a dozen people in the Bill Arp Community who knew what it was.

The old kitchen gave way last week, the last evidence of the Holloway home place and kitchen. The only artifact of The Dog River Boys is my dad's fiddle. It was very, very old when he bought it from Jim Milam in about 1912. Today it is in the Douglas County Museum of History and Art.

I stopped and took a picture of what had been the Holloway kitchen and tried to reflect on what The Dog River Boys sounded like as a musical group.

It must have been terrible.

joenphillips@yahoo.com