It was the summer of 1965 and I was 14 years old. My neighbors had kinfolk visiting from up north. Among the crew that made the journey south were two teenage boys, Joe and Allen, and both played guitars. They had Fender Telecasters with Fender Amps. What they lacked in skill they made up in volume.
The idea of learning to play slowly seeped through my mind and settled somewhere deep in my soul, where it has lived since that day. I wanted a guitar more than anything in the world. I started the campaign immediately. I badgered mother unmercifully. I whined, cajoled and gave her the silent treatment. She wouldn’t budge. There was no money in the budget for a guitar. Case closed. She suggested that I find a job.
I had a cousin who had gotten a guitar for Christmas the year before. By New Year’s it was propped up in a corner collecting dust. He rarely picked it up. My friend Donnie asked me to go camping down on the Warrior River below Dora. We threw my dad’s old boat in the back of the truck and headed out. We got busy and set trotlines baited with night crawlers and crawfish. We were hoping to catch come big honking catfish for supper. It was late June and warm. The evening air was thick with bat-sized mosquitoes that swarmed
around us like buzzards on road kill.
We built a fire and Donnie pulled out his old flat top guitar from the truck. We sat around and he played old country songs. I asked if he would teach me to play. Unlike the guys from up north, he had lots of patience and showed me chords over and over and over. I learned “Green, Green Grass of Home”.
I was fascinated by the sounds coming from that old guitar. It was love at first sound. I went home the next day and borrowed my cousin’s guitar. The next Christmas I asked my mom and dad for a guitar but things had not improved much, and I had little hope of getting one. But I asked and kept asking.
On Christmas Eve after I opened my gifts, school clothes and a box of shotgun shells, my mom brought out a big box. Inside that box was a Tesco Del Rey electric guitar from Sears and Roebuck.
Looking back, I realize that the guitar was not expensive but mom used the money she had earned doing laundry for some of the families around our community. I knew she had ironed many shirts to pay for that guitar. For the next six weeks I played it every waking moment and promptly made poor grades in school.
Punishment was harsh. NO guitar until my grades came up. Other than the Army that was the longest time period in my life. The next six weeks, the grades came up and never went back down.
I stuck with the guitar and I’m pretty good now. I had the good fortune to marry a woman who loves music as much as I do. We started playing together soon after we met and have to continue to play today.
Playing guitar has given me the opportunity to meet people and go places I would never have done otherwise. Jilda and I have played all over this country as well as in Ireland. Usually when someone invites us over its…”by the way, ya’ll bring your guitars.” Music has been the gift that has kept on giving. I am deeply grateful for that old Sears and Roebuck guitar.
