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Show Travelin' money S.F. art student fiddles with dolls out employment. "A friend of mine had once told me how he built little wooden dolls and sold them for traveling money," recalled John, "so I decided that building and selling dolls was the answer to my problem." "I searched high and low for wood and machinery and finally theNashvilleBoys' Club came to my rescue." At the Boys Club he built 50 lanky dolls with nail joints. The dolls have sticks protruding from their backs, which are held by the operator who bounces the doll on the pavement. If bounced hard, the dolls writhe and gyrate like acrobats and if bounced softly they boogy around like syncopated string puppets. The dolls brought John enough money to vacation in Miami for three week-, and drift as far west as Salt Lake. He advertises by dancing his custom foot-operated foot-operated doll to the beat of his violin. "I advertise anywhere there are people, but mainly on college campuses." College kids buy a lot of dolls, revealed the voung (raftsman, "and campus cops don't bust you for selling without a license." lohn was selling and performing in the Union courtyard Monday and tentatively ten-tatively plans to be at the University for a couple more days. He still, however, has to get his photographs back to the San Francisco Art Institute if he is going to graduate this quarter. ByDANWATKISS Chronicle Staff' Maneuvering a wooden doll to the dance beat of his blue grass fiddle, 22-year-old John Butler is earning money to travel across the country while earning his degree at the San Francisco Art Institute. John left his bay area home two months ago, heading for the Union Crave Fiddlers Convention in North Carolina. Photographing the convention was to be 'he last requirement for his B.F.A. ee at the Art Institute. Heading east on Route 66, he arrived at the mud-drenched convention site in the of North Carolina after about two ks on the road. John was dismayed n he discovered that "long hairs" W taken over the convention, which k the oldest of its kind in the nation and tfaditionally haunted only by the owiesof the blue grass fiddle circuit. ,A of the old-timers were there, gh, with home-made fiddles," said n. "One guy had made his fiddle out he law-bne of a jack ass and another built one out of an old paphone."-"that's the difference 7fnJa violin and a fiddle, the fiddle hi ifferent because it's usually e-made," he continued. i?nvention !asted three days to the of square dance and folk fiddling c "as,onal caterwauls of wine-Phon wine-Phon 8 hairs" John fin'shed his eedth assi8nment e'v and fen u fddling contest with a Head didn'1 qUaMfV- i1"8 to Route 66' ohn's bus a broke sn f Hemingwayis Dolcenea, ouiu?hxih(Nashviiie' Tenn-with- 1 uJn cash for repairs. John sought . . " . v J |