The story began on a sunny fall day with this collie's face - Buddy.

He raced, barking ferociously, from the porch of a home on the top of what looks to be the highest place in Adair County, called Low Gap. His mistress, Fannie Huff, at right, came out to quiet her guard dog and she told us that Buddy had recently had a near-death experience in Edmonton. He wound up becoming her "Buddy" in a last-minute rescue by one of her three children-Greg-the young man at left who is holding up his sisters, Shelly, left, and Tammy. Greg saved Buddy just before the dog was scheduled to be put to sleep. Fannie then introduced her parents, whose home Buddy dutifully guards during Fannie's visits with her ailing father, Mr. John K. Williams, and her mother, Lydia Mae Harvey Williams.

While the Williamses were housebound that day, they still felt up to a visit, sharing how much the family always enjoyed playing and singing at churches in the area. They recalled how the congregations loved traditional songs like Mother's Not Dead, She's Only Sleeping, and The Old Rugged Cross, and a popular one called Gathering Flowers:

"Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet,
Beautiful flowers that'll never decay,
Each soul is a flower on the Master's bouquet,
We're gathering flowers for the Master's bouquet."

"When the Holy Spirit would begin to move in the tent meetings we played," Mr. Williams said, "the shouting would get louder and the congregation would be moving in the Spirit and we'd keep right on playing."

A second cousin to Metcalfe County's famous Lonzo and Oscar Sullivan musician team, he owns a fiddle that's a copy of a 1736 Stradivarius he bought .

Low Gap is located on Greenbriar Ridge in southern Adair County.