Reunited and It Feels So…Uh, Hold That Thought (or, My Gibson Acoustic Is Back from the Shop but Now It’s Cracked Again)

Are you tired of guitar-related posts yet? Hopefully, you aren’t because here’s another.

Well, almost. Kind of.

When I was 8 or 9, I got my first electric guitar for Christmas. I didn’t have any idea what to do with it, but there it was, and I couldn’t have been happier.

the elusive Silvertone

It came from Sears, as most things in our house did. Sears is all but gone now, but it used to be one of the country’s largest retailers (maybe the largest?), famous for their goods-by-mail catalog that served rural residents for 100 years.

The Sears guitars were made in Japan by companies like Danelectro and Teisco. Some of them are sought after today. Others, like the one I had, not so much.

I mean, look at it. It couldn’t be any more basic or any less glamourous. (This picture isn’t the exact guitar I had, but it’s as close as I could get. I couldn’t find a catalog image of mine. Mine actually was kind of glamourous; it had a floral design on the pickguard.)

But just because something isn’t sought after doesn’t mean it’s easy to find. In my case, I’ve been trying to re-buy my youth for, oh, twenty years or more. Searching for a copy of my first Silvertone.

Well, by some miracle, I found one. Not only did I find one, but it was also being sold by someone who lives in Twentynine Palms, which is a neighboring town. What are the odds?

But then the story becomes one of expectations and the way we often consider things to be “ours” the moment we decide to buy them, not when we actually have them in hand.

Do you see where this is going?

I emailed the seller saying, essentially, yes, yes, yes, please!, and never heard back. Now the Craigslist ad is gone, so I don’t even have a picture of the guitar to show you here.

A bird in the hand, and all that.

Well, perhaps in another 20 years, one will present itself to me again. I likely won’t be here in 20 years, but you never know. My people are stubborn and enjoy a kind of willful longevity. We shall see.

Guitar, I will find you again. Don’t worry.

day 48

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN

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