The Oregon Bead Man. I camped next to Al at rendezvous for fifteen plus years. His emporium was a wonder to all. Chevrons, old agates, Dzi, Czech, the whole gamut of African trade beads, Inuit carvings, quillwork, seed beads..... Too much to list. You had to have been there. And Al was such a treat. He had stories from the dawn of time it seemed. He loved to dance around the campfire at night. He went out to rendezvous into his early eighties. His son John brought him to his last primitive when Al was 86. He once told me his recipe for moonshine from the 30's It's since been misplaced. All I remember is it used 100 lbs of sugar. After he passed John and I melted some white glass with Al's ashes and put him in some green chevrons, his favorite bead. His whole family down to great grandkids ended up with Al beads and not a few of them went out into the wider world. As John put it, Al worked the bead game from the outside for forty years, now he's working it from the inside.