When I was 15 years old (1944) I lived in Dayton, Ohio This was before one had to join a tour to go through a museum. My Friend,Jimmy Stone and I used to wander around the back rooms and storage areas of the Dayton Art Institute. It was a grand museum, and we were actually encouraged to wander around to wherever our fancy pointed at the time.
One day we found a little room filled with "stuff". It also had a Victrola (The stand up, wind up kind, state of the art at the time) and some stacks of phoonograph records. Most of the records were by famous classical orchestras and singers, like Enrico Caruso's vesti la Giubba, Arturo Toscaninni's orchewstra etc etc. We went back day after day, wound up the victrola over and over again and one by one, we listened to a lot of "Victor Red Seal" classics, some "Big Band Swing" Benny Goodan, Glenn Miller etc, Traditional Jazz, New Orleans style, Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory, Jack Teagarten, and so on.
We had decided to go through the records one at a time, no repeats, until we foud the sort of thing that we really liked better than the others.
One day,we played a Victor record on which the label looked something like this:

                VICTOR
            Dust Bowl Ballads
               Do-Re-Mi.
               (Guthrie)
             WOODY GITHRIE
          Vocal with guitar

The other side was, "That old Dust Storm"

Our Eyes opened a little bit wider as we stared at the Victrola, It wasn't too far into the song that we realized that this guy was singing about real people and a very real dream shattering
situation. We'd seen "The Grapes of Wrath" and knew very well what Woody was singing about. We had never before heard a person sing a song that contained social comment about a specific occurance. This wasn't what grabbed us, though. It was the performance itself that was enthralling.
We went back day after day and wound up the Victrola time after time and listened to Mr. Guthrie sing and play his guitar over and over and over again. It was the only record of it's kind in the museum. When the Museum poeople saw us coming they remarked, "Do Re Mi, right"? We nodded and proceeded to the room with the victrola. Occasionally we'd listen to Caruso or Yehudi Menhuin once or twice and then go back to "Do Re Mi" and "That old Dust Storm"

If we weren't canoeing on the Miami River or cycling out to the end of the Runway at Wright Field to look over the Chain link fence and watch the airplanes take off, we were at the Dayton Art Institute listening to Woody.

No, there weasn't any "extra security" at Wright Field. The Nation was of one mind. Thanks to the very patriotic Lucky Luciano and the "Maffia" who caught prospective sabotuers on the waterfront, the military wasn't obsessed with security

This went on until we had to go back to school upon which we were otherwise engaged. But, come Christmas, long weekends, spring vacation, and other holidays, we were right back up the hill at the Dayton Art Institute accompanied by the rest of our Roosevelt High School (class of 47) mob, "Tom McQuain, Jack Schaeffer, Tito Puskas and Tom's siblings.

Jody Gibson


Note: Wright Field and Patterson Field were two entirely different facilities at the time.