My Guitar

In two weeks, my friend Cabby and I are having a pretty large yard sale. She has to schlep her stuff from Reno, and has already brought a bunch of items during her last two visits. I realize that what I'm doing is beginning to winnow out my encumbrances ahead of the need to leave this house, the place I've lived the longest since my childhood home. It is a major task, and this yard sale will be only the first winnowing, ridding my house of no-longer-fitting clothes, no-longer-used electronics, and no-longer-wanted accoutrements that have accumulated over many years.

I'm thinking of selling my guitar, which bears considerable thought. I've not been without a guitar since I was 19, with my first one, purchased from a Buffalo pawn shop, a Harmony with steel strings that Brian's father Bob restrung with nylon strings. I didn't learn until much later that it's not a good idea to put nylon strings on a guitar built for steel, and probably vice versa. In a few years, the strings had wandered further and further afield from the neck, making it difficult to play. But I played it anyway. That guitar went with me to Lawton, Oklahoma, when my Bob was stationed at Ft. Sill, and on evenings when thunderstorms killed the power in the service club, I'd sit on the stage and play the guitar and sing folk songs. I wasn't great, but it was better than sitting in the dark without music from the juke box. The soldiers whistled and hooted and I loved it. Sometimes my fingers bled from playing Sinner Man, even with nylon strings, but I played on. One Christmas, just a couple of weeks before Scott was born, both my father and my brother and his wife came to Lawton for the holiday. I used to hang the guitar by its strap in the coat closet, and one day as I was preparing dinner, my husband, father, brother and wife decided to play Bridge. The card table was also kept in the coat closet. My father, in his often hurried careless way, lifted up the card table, knocking the guitar to the floor. I cried with anger and disappointment, but it was only cracked, not broken, and could most likely be fixed. After the holidays, my husband and I took the guitar to a luthier in Lawton, who said he would fix it and not charge us much. He showed us a classical guitar he'd made, and we both strummed it a bit; it sounded like heaven. It had a full, mellow, clear, lovely sound that I'd not heard before, and we coveted it. He was asking $75 for it. I'd paid $25 at the pawn shop for the Harmony, and this wonderful guitar was only 3 times as much. But for us, then, $75 was what $750 is now--at least. That was our monthly rent. We couldn't buy it.

I can't remember exactly when I bought my present guitar, but I was back in the Buffalo area, and I played mostly in the summer when the family was at Kirk Kove, our Canadian retreat. It was a family fishing resort, with our house the first place on the right as you drove in, built in 1924, most likely before the resort was built. In the summer, when lots of kids were around, there were events in the rec hall, and Thursdays were "talent night". Skits were performed, mostly by kids, and then my 2nd husband John and I would sing folk songs--Four Strong Winds, This Land is Your Land, Whisky in the Jar, and too many others to list. One of my favorite memories of Kirk Kove is sitting on our porch at the top of the hill (a small hill, but a hill nonetheless) in the evening, watching the swallows swoop for mosquitoes, and rehearsing whatever we were going to sing that week.

But I neither sing nor play anymore, and the ol' fingers are quite rusty on the few occasions I've picked up a guitar. Both sons have at least one guitar that I could play when I visit them if the need arose. That thought makes me laugh. If the need arose. Right.

Several years ago I took classical lessons for a couple of months, and it was incredibly hard for me to make the stretches my fingers had to make. And aside from whatever pleasure I might eventually have for being able to play a tiny bit, what would I do with it? Impose on my friends and say, "Oh, look at what I learned over the last 6 months!"? No, that's not me.

Four years ago I attended my son Scott's first Gypsy Jam, held at the wonderful Pollywogg Holler in New York State's Southern Tier. I borrowed a friends hard case so I could check my guitar during the flights. I played a couple of things--badly, as I remember--but people were kind, and I knew it would be the only time I'd play at Gypsy Jam, no matter how many more times I might attend the event.

So I look at the once beloved guitar, in its case inside two plastic garbage bags, and wonder why on earth I should keep it around. There is no reason. Why, then, are these tears in my eyes? Eventually I will move from this house, and far more will have to be sold or given away. Perhaps I'll wait until I can let go of my guitar without tears.