The Chinese Guitar

     I entered the motel room carrying my just-purchased brand new $300 guitar in its brand new case.  There were three or four people in the motel room.  For a second or two all eyes scrutinized me and the guitar case in my hand.

      The eyes filled with amusement and wonder, disbelief even.  Impulse-buying was not, and is not, a characteristic that people associate with me.  Yet here I was, gone less than 30 minutes with guitar in hand.

     The beginning of the story probably goes back to my college days when I bought an electric Gretsch guitar in a pawn shop.  It was never a great guitar.  The strings were too far from the fret board on its neck.  Plus, you had to drag an amplifier wherever you went.

      Dad called the first electric-only guitar he saw a “plank”, an assertion we got a lot of mileage out of when we were kids. In later years a history of Les Paul’s first electric guitar provided some justification for Dad’s pronouncement.  Les mounted a tail piece and a bridge on a 4X4 along with the electronic pickups.  Then he connected a neck from another guitar to the 4X4.  After some time, Les took the body of an old acoustic guitar and fixed it loosely to the 4X4 because folks complained that his contraption didn’t look like a guitar.

      My plank came to a-near end when the neck strap I was using gave away when I was talking on the phone and didn’t have either hand on the guitar.  Of course it landed right on the tuning knobs.  The neck got knocked loose.  It was no longer possible to tighten the strings.

    I couldn’t figure out how to get the neck off.  Bill, a furniture refinisher in Greeley, took out his pocket knife, dug out a soft plug, and removed an old wood screw.  The neck was off in less than a minute.  The condition of the screw (rusty) and the type of screw (flat head wood screw) suggested this wasn’t the first time the neck had been removed from this Gretsch.

    Bill glued the neck back on, but the angle wasn’t correct.  When tuned correctly, the strings were too far from the neck.  It wore out your fingers to play it very much.  A subsequent removal and replacement of the neck ameliorated that problem somewhat, but then there were electrical problems with the pickups and the adjustment knobs.  Besides, you still had to tote an amplifier and cords.

     So buying a guitar wasn’t exactly an impulse buy.  I had been thinking about replacing the plank with an acoustical model for about 30 years.

     A contributing factor was Ralph coming into my life.  That happened when he married a life-long neighbor who had been widowed.  Ralph played fiddle and being new to the community was always looking for someone to jam with.    

      We got together the first time because he needed a rhythm guitar to accompany him in a fiddle contest in Kiowa.  We had some trouble meshing at first.  I had some experience with hoe-down fiddling, having played with an old time fiddler in Kansas.  But I didn’t know much about bluegrass. I assumed Ralph was a full-blown bluegrasser.

      Somehow, we both came to realize that our real love was ‘30 through ‘50’s tunes.  Then we hit it off.  We got together two or three times a week during the summers before Ralph moved to Colorado Springs.  I used Mom’s acoustic guitar during those years.

     One year, Ralph suggested we meet at the midwinter bluegrass festival held in Denver in February.  I had never been to a bluegrass gathering.  I didn’t know it was an excuse to get together and jam with everybody you could.  I didn’t bring a guitar.

     We all went to Ralph’s motel room and he broke out his fiddle.  Brother John was there with his twelve string guitar.  I was there with my teeth in my mouth.  John suggested we could share his guitar.  We played a few tunes, but John or I was always on the sideline.  I wasn’t too adept with a twelve string guitar. 

     After a not-so-successful attempt on my part to keep up with Ralph playing the twelve string, I said with a mix of frustration and bravado, “I’m going to go buy a guitar!” 

     Audible laughter followed me as I handed John his guitar and headed for the motel room door.  “I’ll go with you, just to see what there is,” said the Goodwife, the inveterate shopper.

     The festival was held at a Ramada Inn off of I25 on120th Avenue.  On the main floor was a huge lobby, a theatre, a couple of big meeting rooms and several smaller meeting rooms around the perimeter.  One of the larger meeting rooms was filled with vendors selling all kinds of stuff including instruments.

     In those days, a person could go anywhere without buying a “bracelet” except to the theatre or the big meeting room where the show stars performed.  (The last time I was there, I couldn’t go anywhere, including the vendor’s room, without the bracelet.)  I walked into the vendor venue and started looking at guitars.  I passed by the Martin guitars selling for $2K or more.  I located the low-cost seller who was displaying guitars listed for $800 and up.

     Hmm.  Maybe I wasn’t going to buy a guitar after all.  “Have anything in a lower-cost range?” I asked.  (I may have said “cheaper”, maybe.)

     The guy rummaged around beneath his table.  He pulled out a guitar and said, “This one is $300.”  He probably had $500 to $600 models, too, but he accurately took my measure, especially if I said “cheaper”.   He handed me the guitar.  I checked it for fret accuracy.  I played a few chords.  The neck was narrow enough for my short fingers.  The strings were fairly easy to hold against the frets without cutting slots in my fingers.  It had a good sound, as near as I could tell with all the noise in the place.

     “Will you take an out-of-state check?”            

     He laughed.  “Every check I take here is out-of-state!  I’m from Idaho!”  (Or was it Montana or Wyoming?  Anyway, he was not a Coloradan.)  I found the Goodwife, secured the checkbook, promised to pay her the $300 with cash I had saved for the day, returned and wrote the guy a check.  As I wrote, he pulled a guitar case from somewhere and carefully placed my guitar in it.

    “Gee, I get a case, too?”

     “All my guitars come with cases.”  I dropped the checkbook off with the Goodwife as I headed for the motel room. 

      “I’m going to look around for a while,” she said.  I stepped into the motel room with new guitar case proudly fronting for me.

      Ralph stood there with fiddle in left hand, bow in his right.  Nobody said anything for a second or two.  Then Ralph asked, “Where’s Patti?  Did you have to trade her for that guitar?”  Everyone laughed at that.

     The new guitar came out of the case and underwent an inspection.  “Hmm.  Made in China,” Ralph said.  Sure enough, that’s what it said right there on the interior body.  Well, it was only $300.  I’ve never been able to coax it into a proper rendition of “Chopsticks”.  It plays all kinds of intervals, not just open 4ths and 5ths.  It has forgotten its heritage, maybe.

    The guitar was properly tuned and a proper jam session ensued.  Eventually, the wayward shopper returned to the room and my denials of a barter deal were confirmed.

     To this day Ralph still asks about the guitar that I traded my wife for.