Can I Axe You a Question?

A guitar is never just a guitar.  A guitar is a sound and a story; it is an extension of a person's soul, much in the way that feudal Japanese samurai believed that their swords were their souls.

Willie Nelson has his Trigger, named after Roy Rogers' horse, beat to hell and hidden from the IRS during his famous tax problems in the early 1990s.  Jack White (of the White Stripes and solo fame) has his red JB Hutto Montgomery Airlines guitar.  I have my mother's old guitar.

This guitar came to me some half-dozen years ago when I stumbled upon it (not literally, thank goodness) in the attic of my parents' house.  It was in a box more dust than cardboard, and I doubt my mother had even taken it out of the box in twenty years.

The guitar itself was in good shape, save for the black and filthy strings, even if it was nothing special as far as guitars go.  It's a simple wooden acoustic guitar, metal frets, a plastic pick guard, no strap.  I was never really sure what the guitar would mean to me, but I missed having music in my life, and Mom didn't care if I took the guitar with me.


I found out in no time at all that this guitar was tough to play.  Part of this problem was the adjustment of my fingers to the guitar strings.  Who would have thought that pressing coiled wire into a person's fingertips could be painful after a period of time?  It also turned out that the guitar had a "high action", I think, meaning that the strings had to be pressed relatively hard to play different notes.

The difficulty of the guitar itself was not an effective deterrent for me.  Would a newer, 'better' guitar have magically imbued me with musical ability?  Well, no.  And so, I set about playing, enrolling in a basic guitar class through the city's continuing education program.

To be continued...