VOLUME V: Fiddling Contest, Clarksville, Missouri

Behind the V.F.W. Hall, in its dusty gravel parking lot, the fiddlers gathered. Some sat on the hoods of cars. Others stood in small clusters, a couple of fiddlers and their seconds in each. They polished their tunes for the contest, one of the last in the long summer season. When each cluster played separately, passing through the parking lot was like walking through a large room filled with radios tuned to different stations. It was a musical traffic jam, a kind of pleasing cacophony. When the group played as one, as it did a couple of times during the course of the day-long event, it was a string symphony, elegant in an ironic sea of Fords, Toyotas and pick-up trucks. Beyond the pool of shade cast by the hall, the sun was blinding. It caused those dressed for the season, and not for the strangely warm October day, to overheat. It etched life-size doubles of the fiddlers onto the gravel. They danced there, mirroring every bow-stroke, every strum of a guitar. Inside the hall was the friendly din of a church supper. At long banquet tables people enjoyed each other's company and the special of the day – fried catfish sandwiches, sides of coleslaw and deep dishes of apple pie for dessert. One by one the fiddlers came inside and stepped onto the stage to play their three tunes for the judges. They played the standards in Missouri old-time fiddling ó "Sally Goodin'," the popular "Marmaduke's Hornpipe," "Bill Cheatem" and the beautiful "Over the Waves," perhaps the best-liked and most-played waltz in the state. Then one by one the fiddlers went back out again, into the parking lot, where the young players paced and practiced by themselves. And where the old-timers, relaxed in their experience, gathered together, savoring the fellowship of the contest season to its very end.