Hugh Dennis Tippen started playing the fiddle when he was nine years old. The elementary school principle gave Dennis a fiddle that was busted up in a bar-room brawl. Dennis took the fiddle home in a paper sack. With a bottle of glue he put the fiddle back together. With real horse hair he made a bow and with real pine-tree rosin, he rosined the bow. With keen hearing, he tuned the fiddle to perfection and without any formal instructions he learned to play. At the age of ten he was entertaining at the Saturday Night Barnyard Dances. His mother, who we called, Grandma Nan, dressed him up in a cowboy hat and boots, made him a rhinestone shirt and leather pants, and set him up on the stage, and the adults marveled at his ability to play the fiddle.Grandma Nan was in an unhappy marriage. At the age of fifteen she was forced to marry an older man and she was never happy in the marriage. She had planned to use "Little Dennis" as her ticket to escape the unhappy relationship. Her plans were to take Dennis to Nashville where he would become a superstar fiddle player. However, something happened that Nan was not expecting. Dennis met a seventeen year old, rosy-cheeked, beautiful, Scott-Irish girl, and fell in love. At the age of eighteen he was married. Things changed for Grandma Nan, but Dennis never stopped playing the fiddle. Even though he never became a Superstar, Dennis acquired great knowledge about the musical industry that he passed on to his youngest son. "There are thousands of great pickers," he said, (referring to guitar players, banjo pickers, and mandolin players) "whose talents are never discovered because they were never in the right place at the right time. That is why hundreds of musicians flock to Los Angeles, New York, and Nashville, trying to increase their odds of being at the right place at the right time. There are hundred of talented musicians living on the streets of Nashville with swollen stomachs from the lack of food, attempting to gain the status of superstardom. There is a long, hard, competitive road between the novice and the professional, in which very few make to the end."I am the only living child of the nine children of Dennis and Amy Tippen. I have experienced much of what Papa told me to be true. There will always be that special song such as, "I Wasn't Expecting That" or "The Old South Road," that will excel some one from a novice to a professional. And for those of us who have been blessed to reach the status of "Senior Citizen," there will always be that special song that we can relate to, such as "Old Man Take Look at my Life." We can all recall those early years when we were determined to change the world.I can remember when I was 21 and planned to be the best school teacher the world had ever known. I would use all my energy to inspire students to learn. I have accomplished some of that. I can remember when I was going to be the owner of a retail music store and sell hundreds of guitars, drum sets, and keyboards. I planned to make millions and millions of dollars, and I have accomplished only a small portion of that. Then I was going to become a writer and write a best selling novel that would sell millions and millions around the world. I have not accomplished that. However, I have learned that is difficult to be recognized by the literary establishment.But now at the age of 82 sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and when everything is still and quiet, way off in the distance, Little Dennis is still playing his fiddle. I hear the tunes, "Turkey in the Straw," "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain," and "Corinna, Corinna." Thanks Dad, because the older I got, the smarter you became. Thanks for the advice and most of all thanks for the memories.