Toenail Guitar Picks?
 There was a fellow
who used to come to Bean Blossom and I believe he lived near
Bloomington, Indiana. His first name was "Max" but
I could never remember his last name, so I just remember him
as "Max from Bloomington". Max nearly always stopped
by our campsite to chat when he was there. He was a big man,
over six feet, 230 pounds, middle-aged with a gray beard and
he always wore a cap like the golfers wore in the '20s &
'30s, a tee shirt, and bib overalls. Max used a cane, and he
had some ornate ones, like Irish shillalahs, which he made himself.
Max was a musician and an instrument trader, especially guitars
and mandolins. One striking thing about Max was that he usually
wore sandals with no socks and his toenails were very long. After
I got to know him well enough, I asked him why he let his toenails
grow so long. His answer was, as I remember it, "Because
they make good guitar picks". (Bud Freedman has a slightly
different recollection; he says that a hippie offered to buy
one of Max's big toe nails to use as a guitar pick).
Jim Peva
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