OUT OF THIN AIR It isn't often that someone you see every day becomes famous but I felt that special warm feeling for Don when I read three large columns in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada which describes "The Islanders", "The most popular old time music group in Canada during the mid-20th Century." One of Don's fiddles was placed in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and his library and papers are in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia . I believe the most moving tribute paid to Don Messer and the Islanders was by Maritime poet Alden Nowlan in Weekend Magazine in 1979. He wrote that his father was a real Don Messer fan: "Having come home from the sawmill where he worked, stop¬ ping in the dooryard to shake the sawdust out of his overalls and shirt and to wash in cold water in a basin on the back steps, and having washed down his supper with countless cups of brick-colored tea, he would roll and light a cigarette (his third and last of the day) and then tune in to the Islanders. Out of the old battery-operated Marconi would come the guy-next-door voice of Ray Simmons , then Charlie Chamberlain would sing and Don and the boys would break into "The Operator's Reel" or "The Devil's Dream" and my father no matter how weary he must have been after $ hours at work, would tap his toes in time to the music. Men like my father cried when they heard in 1973 that Don Messer was dead. I doubt that any artist can be paid a higher tribute than that. 104