by Bob McMahon, Lansdowne, PA

In the early 1990s my wife and I took our toddler daughter Julia to see Pete Seeger perform at a weekday fundraiser for a small local group. It was an extremely informal gathering because the audience was so small, but Pete and his banjo were there to entertain us. Someone in the room requested “Abiyoyo”. Pete said he’d be happy to do it, but since it was intended as a children’s story/song, he wanted to get all the children in the room together while he did it. As it turned out, Julia was the only child present! Not wanting to deny a song request, Pete walked right over to us and spent the next ten minutes telling and singing the story of Abiyoyo without taking his eyes off Julia.

Julia, for her part, was transfixed by this tall man with the white beard who was telling her this exciting story, and her eyes just kept getting wider and wider as she smiled at him. When he finished, she couldn’t stop laughing and clapping her hands, and Pete leaned over and kissed her. As Pete’s old band The Weavers would have said, “Wasn’t that a time”.