When either family would pay visit to the other guitars would be uncased and the three of us would make music. Sometimes I played guitar, at other times I played bass or mandolin.
These brothers grew up in a small industrial/agricultural town during the depression. My Father held a steady factory job throughout and by the time I arrived he had raised our small family from poverty to blue collar status. None of his siblings managed such personal betterment.
Still my parents never lost the thrift born of necessity from life in the Great Depression. There were no professional-quality guitars around the house as I was growing up, as they were considered to be unaffordable. “Gibson” and “Gretsch” were to me only names and photos from some glossy magazine. The guitars I knew in childhood had names like Silvertone, Kay, Harmony, and Tiesco. The greatest number of guitars I ever knew my Dad to own at once was 3, and they cost perhaps $100 collectively.
During my high school senior year Uncle Clive suffered a stroke. He eventually regained use of one arm and extremely limited speech but Uncle Clive would never play guitar again.
Shortly thereafter I bought my first professional quality guitar – a new Fender Stratocaster. The year was 1976. I still remember the day I went to show Uncle Clive my new prized possession.
I drove to their home, the kind of ancient wood-frame home in disrepair that their poverty could provide. After greeting my Aunt and cousins in the kitchen I went to Uncle Clive’s room where he was sitting up in bed, unshaven and uncombed. The rusty metal-framed bed was in one corner, his one useful arm to the wall. One noble beam of sunlight labored to pierce the room through a nearby window pane. He smiled when I entered and squeaked out a simple sound in greeting. I laid the case across the arms of a chair. "Uncle Clive, I came to show you what I just bought."
Oh, what a change came over him when I opened the case and presented a shiny new Stratocaster. His eyes grew large, his mouth formed a small circle, and I heard his breath escape. He reached out with his functional right hand and grasped the neck confidently near the body. I certainly couldn't deny this man. I let him take the guitar.
His face awash in wonder and amazement, he set the endpin in his lap and gazed at the guitar for a few long moments. His eyes traveled slowly up and down the instrument the way a man in a Hollywood classic would size up the hourglass figure of some femme fatale. The silence in the room was thunderous, the emotional current palpable. My skin tingled. I could not have prepared my heart for what came next.
I expected him to lay the guitar on his lap or rest the neck across his left shoulder in an approximation of playing position. Instead, he brought the neck back toward his right shoulder. He closed his eyes, lowered his head, and hugged the maple neck firmly to his cheek as if this guitar were a child who had been given up for dead. His hand began to tremble and as I watched, tears dripped down his face.
I was 17 years of age. I shall hold that image in my memory for life.
I know that his tears were mostly out of sorrow and frustration, out of his sense of loss at not being able to play, but I also wish to believe that in some small part there was joy and pride that his favorite nephew had been able to acquire an instrument the likes of which had always been thought to be out of reach.
These days a new Stratocaster seems ordinary and mundane in my world. My Father is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and can no longer play. When I go to visit he does not know who I am. He usually thinks that I am brother Clive, and I do not correct him. He often asks me to play for him and I oblige. I cannot play many of the songs that my Father requests but in my heart I carry a vivid image of the brother to whom the request is made, and the love of music they shared.
