There are some comments by one particular person after a live performance clip from Merle's '16 tons' on youtube - here's what was partially written:
Years ago, I was in the Army deployed to Hungary. We were restricted to base except for one restaurant off post that my buddy Jeremy and I got a gig to play. It was my first sort-of paying gig...goulash, bread, and a coke from the owner. We thought we were going to play for 20 minutes, tops. Turned out we were there for the next five hours. We started off well, but my voice started to give out, and we were getting tired, messing up some songs badly, and were ready to leave about 10:30 with our tails between our legs. Part of our problem was we had no idea what they wanted to hear. We were getting ready to pack up and leave when a man walked up from the other end of the restaurant with a yellowed piece of paper with this scribbled on it: "16 Tonnes." I had the song in a cheat book, and another friend of ours who was there sat in and played guitar (he was far better than me) and my buddy played harmonica while I did my best Tennessee Ernie Ford imitation. We absolutely killed, huge applause. After that we could do no wrong. We played like pros, voices were perfect, everything just clicked........
Anyway, I will never forget that night, and I still have that piece of paper 22 years later.
Hungary of all places - Hungary of course was big on mining and coal was abundant. A somewhat little different Hungary now but goulash is still popular even as coal is unloved.
As for knowing things - I know of two things, firstly, what I know is so very little in the scheme of things and secondly, there's so much more of little and big things out there even as the world seems smaller.
On a different note and only one note a pleasant encounter - wonder who is the 'boss'a:
