By now my readers know I was involved in the folk music world of the 60’s. That lasted into the 90’s. I’ll tell that story another time and what eventually led me away from that clientele.

                There was a woman named Nancy I was interested in during my 2 years at FSU. A mutual friend, Craig in Hot Tamale here in Tallahassee, told me many years later she had succumbed to breast cancer. I gave a donation to the local women’s shelter in her memory. There was no limit to the number of women I was interested in back then. Remember, I came of age in the Sixties, when “if you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with!” For me the Sixties continued on into the 70’s.

                Her roommate Cheryl was Cuban from Miami. Her father had a Cuban restaurant. She brought back a cast iron frying pan that had to be four feet across and held a paella party, cooking it over an open fire in the backyard. I find myself across the fire from Tom, Nancy’s boyfriend. I knew she was dating him at the time. I am sure he did not know my intentions towards Nancy that night. He was as button down a straight-laced preppie as you’d ever want to meet!

                I do not remember how the conversation started. It reached the point where we had both had said we were from South Florida.

“You know what I miss the most about South Florida?”

“No, what?” I responded.

“The coffee houses and the folk music scene.”

“I helped create the coffeehouse in ’68 across Dixie Highway from The Flick. Me, too!”

“You know the folk singers?”

That was one of the many moments in my life when I did NOT emulate “Mad Magazine’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” satire, so I did not say “Doh!”

Instead I said,

“Yes.”

“Could you get them to come to FSU to play?”

“Where would they perform?”

“Well, they just raised the drinking age to 21 so the Rathskeller, the beer bar in the basement of the student union, closed. It’s empty!”

I said,

 “How in the hell are we going to get the Rathskeller?”

“I’m in student government (I did say he was a preppie) so I’ll propose it!”

I reached across the fire and poked him in the chest:

“You get the Rathskeller, and I’ll book the performers!”

pointing back to my own chest.

He did, and we did. THAT is why it is called the “Down Under”. Not long after FSU built a performance space on the ground floor in the student union. My claim to fame in the Tallahassee music scene.

                The rest of the story: later that night Nancy ended up with me. That’s quite a story but for the sake of decency these posts have been kept, well, cautious. If this ends up as a book, it will add a funny “climax” (Whoops! Bad choice of word!) to this story.