Chapters Cover Foreword Chapter One In the Beginning Chapter Two Kinds of Spoons Chapter Three Gripping the Spoons and Body Position Chapter Four Just Enough Music for the Spoon Player Chapter Five Hitting the Beat and Adding the Off-Beat Chapter Six Playing along with the Music Chapter Seven Playing the Different Parts Chapter Eight Adding Variety or Showing Off Chapter Nine Ready For Live Music Chapter Ten Off and Going Where And When to Play Chapter Eleven That's It There isn't Anymore About the Author

You, Too, Can Play The Spoons About the Author Alan Claude Ferguson was born in 1923 into a pioneer family of the Ozarks in Willow Springs, Missouri. He was the second of four sons raised on a small Jersey dairy farm. He grew up in a close extended family with aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozen in a community wherein hardwork and fellowship were the orders of the day. He grew up in an era wherein mosts wants and needs came from the resources at hand. Food for the table came from the farm and field and hard work. Much clothing came from the needle and thread and a great deal from feed and flour sacks. Entertainment, except for primitive radio, squawky Victrolas and silent movies was in the form of games, stories and self-produced music.That is where Claude learned to play the spoons. Claude joined the United States Forest Service in 1940 as a Lookout on the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri while a senior in high school. He also operated the Forest Service concession stand at Noblett Lake near Willow Springs and a float trip and guide service on the North Fork of the White River each summer. After three years in the U.S. Navy as an Aviation Radio-Radar Operator and Gunner and Instructor during WW II, he returned to the Forest Service for 4-years. He then secured his B.S. in Forestry with Distinction from the University of Missouri in 1952. Claude served in assignments on National Forests in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan and in the Forest Service Regional Office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He then served as Forest Supervisor of the Wayne (Ohio) and Hoosier (Indiana) National Forests with headquarters in Bedford, Indiana, where he enjoyed his retirement until he passed away June 15, 2006.