University of Tennessee Knoxville - Volunteer Yearbook (Knoxville, TN)

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time until Easter 1978. The music was over. Fiddles were tucked away. Twelve hours later the grounds were almost clear, and on the seventh day following the exodus, the clean-up crew rested and saw what they had done, and decided it was good. 27

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A man wearing a nose ring sauntered by a make-shift stand advertising speed for sale. A young boy, situated by an open air pavilion, sold rocks for five cents apiece. A a purple wig bought a popsicle at a concession stand. Strains of Hells Angels' motorcycles and red-bearded man wearing cries for Liquid Qualude moonshine fil- tered through the sounds of 150,000 camp- ers at the 53rd annual Fiddlers Convention at Union Grove, N.C. Individual campsites dotted the 120 acre farm of JP. Van Hoy, host of the Easter weekend bluegrass festival, and Knoxville license plates were scattered over the enor- mous parking areas. A row of moveable toilets, known as Port-O-Lets, complete with overflowing excretion and discarded douche packages, bordered each of the camping areas. As the scorching Friday afternoon dis- appeared into evening, campfires lit up the wooded grounds like lightning bugs in a jar. The smoke from dinners cooking mingled with marijuana smoke appeared to form a ceiling below the trees. Amateur musicians played at their campsites for friends and visitors, passing the time until the true-blue- grass competition. Seven o'clock seemed the signal hour for the hoards of fiddle fans to swarm around the stage. The bleachers held only the first 12,000 to arrive. Three thou- sand more filled the aisles and countless thousands listened in more comfortable conditions around the farm. Many of those in the pavilion brought a night's supply of beer, liquor or marijuana because a return to camp for fresh supplies would entail an odyssey of vicious elbows and dancing feet One young man scanned the crowded scene and decided to relieve his bladder in the aisle rather than battle the bodies. He then sat down, dropped some cocaine on his thumbnail and snorted it. A bearded man in the row behind him requested a swap of a cold beer for a hit of coke. I am insulted was the only response he received. Competition in the banjo and fiddle categories was steep. Most performers Were bluegrass festival contestants of many years. Some were even veterans of the first Union 26 Grove convention held in the school house in 1924. Although oldsters dominated the competition, some entire families entered, with four generations represented. The loud- speaker periodically requested the crowd to hold the noise down until the end of each piece, but stomping feet and clapping hands remained almost as loud as the music. Clog- gers performed the traditional mountain dancing at intervals through the three nights of entertainment. Camp fires lit the landscape long after the music in the pavilion ended. People dis- cussed the abundance of available drugs or the price-hike from $15 to $20 for admis- sion over 1976. Others roasted marsh- mallows. Some campers got separated from their friends and wandered through the woods the better part of the night. One young man with a black braided beard, announced to a group of strangers that he was too high to remember where his camp was. He introduced himself as Doe and sat on a log with his stubbly face and glazed eyes brightened by the fire. Making a stab at conversation with his personal experiences in South America, he explained that one day in the jungle a huge iguana crawled out of a tree and said to him, I want your lunch. As he spoke, a limp body rolled down the hill into the center of the camp. Iguana Man continued, naturally I gave it to him. The body twitched, babbled as if speaking in tongues, and rolled further down the hill. lguana Man moved from fire to fire like a moth until he was out of sight. Saturday morning began in stifling heat. The masses were dirty, sweaty, and sticky, as some campers had arrived as early as Mon- day. People crowded around single spigots of water. Some tried to wash hair under the dribble. Others brushed teeth, some rinsed contact lenses for another day of smoke abuse. One member of the throng had a different idea. Buddy Tucker drove 15 miles to Statesville, checked in a motel, took a shower, and drove back to the farm. One teenage-Iooking girl poked her head out of her tent at 7:30 am. and asked of anyone who might be listening, What'll it be first thing this morning? Liquor? Pot? Chemicals? A girl in a nearby tent count- ered, How about breakfast? Breakfast turned out to be pot. After the meal an other member of the group hitchiked to Statesville, the nearest wet town, on a liquor run. He returned with a case of Mad Dog wine. Saturday was much like Friday, complete with Union Grove T-shirt vendors, authen- tic Indian torquoise jewelry stands and booths adorned with hand-crafted musical instruments. For the most part Saturday was a lazy day, spent lounging under trees and sipping cold beer. By 3 am. Sunday, the dust from the pavilion's dirt floor had settled for the last TBIIE

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