guitar

All my life I had an inexplicable yen for all things Spanish. Now that I now why, it doesn't have a hold on me anymore. I was always infatuated with the sound of the Spanish language, and Spanish-sounding music would send me into a tizzy. I took Spanish in high school. I thought I'd gone to heaven when mother bought tickets for the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and we went to watch Jose Greco and his Flamenco troupe. I just couldn't get enough of it. I bought an LP of Manitas de Platas and drooled.

In high school, probably my junior year of 1965, I took a chunck of lath father had laying around in the basement and sawed it to the approximate length of a guitar neck. Then I glued toothpicks on to mimic the frets and last, I glued some more toothpicks to imitate the strings. I bought a "teach-yourself" guitar book with babysitting money and began practicing at night in my room in Germantown. At that time I was in the room on the third floor overlooking the garden out back.

One day father came upstairs to ask me something and found me busy with my "guitar". He looked puzzled and asked what I was doing. I was happy to explain. That Christmas I found a guitar under the Christmas tree. It was a $15 Sears and I loved that thing as if it had been a Gibson. Suddenly I learned what it meant to build callouses on your fingertips.

After I graduated high school, my first few paychecks went to things that were most important to me at the time. First I paid back mother and father for an Olympia typewriter I'd needed for school and Walter for a set of waterless pots and pans that I still have today. Then came the much wanted contact lenses, and finally an acoustic Harmony (they don't make them anymore). Then I took the bus past my house up Germantown Ave., with a transfer to the trolley up Jenkintown Ave. to take lessons with Tossi Aaron once a week.

I didn't have a talent for the guitar, or music in general, but I enjoyed playing for myself. I wasn't half bad for the first couple or three years. I still played a very little when the children were young and as I got older the guitar got played less and less, until one day I realized I was only picking it up once every year or two. It became difficult to play those chords that streched my fingers and made my wrist do things it shouldn't have done and by the time my children were in high school, I couldn't remember but 3 or 4 chords and couldn't play a single song without a cheat sheet.

Time passed and the guitar stayed packed safely in its case. It was a treasure to me because of what it represented and even though I could barely tune it anymore (I don't have an ear either), and often gave up, I couldn't part with it. It moved with me after the divorce. Since the children were grown and I was living by myself, it finally got unpacked, and placed carefully with some reverence, in a position where I could easily see it.

Some years after that it had a terrible accident and it got a large hole in its side, but still I held on to it. Eventually the fret separated from the neck, I guess the on/off air-conditioning in that small room I was keeping it in just wasn't suitable. I was actually going to replace the guitar at some point, but that's when I found out they don't make them anymore.

The guitar was a sad looking thing and still I kept it. Every time I thought to dispose of it, it felt like I was about to throw a piece of me away. Then, in the Spring of 2010 I gave in to a housecleaning urge I hadn't had in years. Every closet was emptied, every cabinet, and every drawer. Every box, envelope, and glass jar got opened and inspected and I did weeding the likes of which I used to do in the garden. Many boxes of items found their way to the trash or the Goodwill, but not the guitar. Part of me wanted to keep it and part of me said it was time to let go.

And, so I did. One day a few short weeks after the weeding I walked up to Kevin and asked him to take it to the trash because I couldn't do it. Funny how that works with some things, isn't it? Well, I thought about that Harmony from time to time, but it got easier. After all, I kept telling myself, it's not the guitar, it's the memories. Now, here I am in December of 2012 and I haven't thought of the guitar since my move out of the apartment. Writing about it gives a twinge, but that part of the story has finally reached its end.

The other part of the story took place in 1992. It was then that I went back to Germany for my only return visit to the little town where I was born. I remembered a few names and one of the ones I wanted to see again was Manfred Yanka. I visited with him and his wife one evening and we had a good conversation. We spoke about guitar (he plays) and he said that he and Walter Berger would get together from time to time, and every so often a little snot-nosed kid would come and listen. They played different kinds of music. I think that's when it all started, the fascination with all things Spanish, back in Germany.

I *think* I remember Walter playing in Germantown in the early 1960's before the "Three Musketeers" went off to join the Marines, and then again in the late 1960's when I made the trip to California and I had to practically beg him to play a bit for me again. As a matter of fact, I remember when the boys (Walter and Klaus) were living with us, that they had the very same bedroom on the third floor I'd later use to practice guitar in.

As I said once before, somewhere else, I'm ever so grateful that the two boys in Germany (who must have been barely teenagers at the time) put up with me, and that later on Walter put up with my begging because those forgotten experiences worked in my life and gave me a pleasure and delight I wouldn't have otherwise had.