Saturday Night With The The Folk Ramblers

      Last Saturday night a couple of the Posse members and I grabbed our partners by the hand and headed one suburb over to beautiful downtown Westerville,

... to Java Central, a coffee shop/art gallery/music venue,

...for an evening of singing along to the folk music of the 1960's  with The Folk Ramblers,

Carl Yaffey,

and Bill Cohen.

     Yaffey and Cohen are members of the Columbus Folk Music Society, "a nonprofit society committed to folk traditions and the people who want to share in them", and from time to time The Folk Ramblers lead '60's-style sing-alongs at various venues around town to raise money for charitable causes.
     The six of us going to the sing-along decided to meet for dinner beforehand at

Thai Grille,

...a cute little spot just around the corner from Java Central,

...where, they tell tea-totaling me, the tall, cold Thai beer is really good,

..and where, I can attest, the food is really hot!
       One has the choice at Thai Grille, of mild, medium, or hot level of spice on one's food.
       Three of us, me included, chose mild, two of us chose medium, and one chose medium-plus.
       The presentation of each dish was colorful and appealing,

...I especially liked the flower-shaped carrots on my crispy pork,

 ...but do not ask me what my crispy pork or cute carrots or any of the other items on my plate tasted like; after a a few bites my tongue was on fire; by the time I'd finished as much as I could my tasted buds were totally seared and  I couldn't feel my lips.  I wanted to call 911 to send out the ice-cream brigade, stat!
     And I'd ordered the mild level of spice.  
     The others agreed that the heat of the food, even the supposedly mild level, was intense, but then some do like it hot.  Not moi.
      After our spicy, spicy meal at Thai Grille we walked to Java Central, 

....where the friendly wait staff was glad to make me up a frozen caramel mocha without the coffee. 
   After a few sips of the frozen drink the fire in my mouth was extinguished and, to my relief, I was able to feel my mouth again,

...which was a good thing, as we were there, after all, to sing.

     Down a hallway behind the cafe we found the art gallery where The Folk Ramblers were setting up,

...and where tables had been set up for the audience,

...though after that room filled up the audience spilled out into the hallway,

...then into another adjacent room and out onto the patio, where speakers had been set up so that those outside could participate as well.

       Then we the audience settled into an evening of singing along with the old folk ballads from back in the days when every other kid had a guitar and could strum out at least the three or four chords needed to play the songs that we of that era used to love to sit around and sing:  songs about freedom, justice, civil rights, peace, love, all those things we children of the 60's longed to bring and sing to the world.
       Perhaps we didn't succeed in singing away the world's troubles back then,  but it was fun to spend an evening singing away our own for a couple of hours, and in singing the old songs, to be, for a just little while, young again.