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  • The Christian Science Monitor

    Finding common ground at a fiddlers' festival in Idaho

    Jun 22, 2018 5 minutes
    Vi Wickam and Vivian Williams warm up in the Weiser High School cafeteria in preparation for the 2018 National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest and Festival in Weiser, Idaho. Ms. Williams won the Senior Senior Division trophy, for fiddlers age 70 and older, in 2017. Williams turned 80 on May 27.

    Every June, Vi Wickam packs his fiddle and drives from his home in Loveland, Colo., to this small Idaho town. “I think it’s my twelfth year,” he says. “I came every year when I was in high school. Then I stopped for about ten years.”

    Mr. Wickam, a champion fiddler, sits in the cafeteria of Weiser High School, smiling and trading good-natured “little pokes” with friends he’s not seen for 51 weeks. 

    “When I was a kid,” he says, “I just came for the contest.”

    “That’s because you didn’t know any better,” quips Vivian Williams, now 80, herself a fiddler and a seven-time contest winner in various divisions.

    “Yeah,” Wickam admits. “Now I come for the jamming, the friends, the camaraderie – and the four minutes of adrenaline when I’m competing. 

    He’s one of an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 musical pilgrims that

    Monday night jams in FiddletownThe future of Weiser

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