My muscles ache tonight since I spent yesterday working on the hedge.  We planted the Arborvitae about 8 years ago.  Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, my son-in-law actually planted them.  I told him where they should go, but he provided all the backbreaking labor to plant the eight three-foot tall saplings.  We chose these shrubs from the cypress family because the nursery promised a great privacy screen in a matter of a couple of years from these hardy evergreen plants.  We were not disappointed.

Within two years, we had a wonderful hedge just outside the chain link fence on the west edge of our property.  I was careful to water them regularly, but not too often and they thrived, growing to a height of well over ten feet tall.  Until last summer.  We had several weeks of ninety plus degree days, with little rain, so I started watering a little more often, but it was to no avail.  We ended up with eight beautiful, tall everbrowns.  The expert from the nursery pronounced last rites, assuring me that they would not recover.  So, last week I started removing them, to the dismay of my already injured back, deferring the rest of the task until the Saturday just past.  It was a heartbreaking job.  They were old friends, which I had nurtured from saplings.  I provided them with a place to grow and occasional waterings and they provided me with protection from prying eyes and the view of the very ugly deserted car wash across the street.  No more.  Yesterday, the last of them was removed, to be dumped unceremoniously in the ditch, awaiting the mulch truck within the next week or two.  I’m not happy.  The view of the car wash is still just as unsightly as I remember it. 

When we purchased the music store and the house next door, soon to be our home, there was a beautiful pear tree in the backyard, right near the front of the store and the back door of the house.  It provided astounding, aromatic blossoms in the springtime, wonderful, cooling shade in the summertime, and eye-popping colors of red and purple in the autumn.  The trunk of the tree was three feet in diameter, the branches reaching the height of thirty-some feet.  We loved the tree and would have been satisfied to keep it there for as many years as we are privileged to live in the house.  Alas, that also was not to be.  In an ice storm two winters ago, the weight of the freezing water proved too much for the spreading branches, toppling most of them from the huge trunk.  We had no choice but to remove the still erect trunk after the branches were cleaned up and the damage to the store and house repaired.  The lovely shade tree’s life was cut short in a few disastrous hours of nature’s onslaught.

“Some people just shouldn’t try to grow things,”  I can hear it already.  And you might be right.  My thumb is definitely not any shade of green.  I’ve never claimed to be a plant whisperer and I do neglect my obligations to them frequently.  But, leaving that aside, I also have a point to make.  When the expert came to look at my dying Arborvitae, he said that the bushes had died from the roots up, resulting in the dried up foliage and otherwise unchanged trees.  The ornamental pear tree, on the other hand, is notorious for outgrowing itself.  It rarely dies from the root, but because of the way the branches grow out of the trunk, almost always grows limbs which are too heavy for it to bear up under.  Two separate problems, with the same ultimate result; a dead tree.  Bad roots; bad branches; either one results in failure of the entire organism.

There is one tree which grows in my backyard that I don’t worry about at all.  I think its proper name is a Yarwood London Plane tree.  It’s a hybrid of the sycamore tree, but grows much straighter and taller.  To my knowledge, no one planted this tree on purpose, but it grows right outside the fence, within ten feet of the street.  Someday, someone will have to cut it down, but I hope I’m gone long before that (pretty likely since they have an average lifespan of 150 years).  I don’t worry about the tree, because it has never given any sign of needing anything.  The huge leaves provide wonderful shade and it grows straight up to the sky, reaching up some fifty feet.  The beautiful white bark and large hanging leaves only add to its attractiveness.  The little ditch it grows beside evidently provides all the water it needs from the runoff of the frequent rains we have here.  Good roots and good branches, it thrives throughout the year, growing about three feet taller every year, providing shade and beauty without needing anything from me.  This tree, I like!

Now, you know me…I always want to leave you with a moral to my writing, but I’m going to let you draw your own conclusion today.  I could fill another page or two with my take on the connection between these three different plants growing (or not growing) in my yard, but you don’t need me to insult you with that.  I will admit that the idea was sparked by a guest speaker at our church last week, who talked about “trees planted by the streams of water; which yield their fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither.”

I’ll leave you to work the ground now and see what comes up.  Happy gardening!

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
(Ancient Greek proverb)

Thirty minutes.  Half an hour.  That’s all the time I had to enjoy my Toyota pickup truck before having my first accident in it.  How is that possible?  I had driven it off the dealer’s lot on the outskirts of Fort Worth and headed east toward Dallas.  Well, toward Arlington actually.  My plan was to go to a few pawnshops and junk dealers, oh excuse me…antique stores in Arlington and then head on northeast through Dallas, in the general direction of home in Northwest Arkansas.  That was the plan, anyway.  But I’m getting the cart before the horse, aren’t I?

You may be asking at this point, “Why did he go all the way to Fort Worth to buy a truck?  Don’t they have trucks in Arkansas?”  I’ll try to keep the background short, but the departure from my normal buying methods demands a little explanation, at the least.  You see, my usual way of buying a vehicle is to drive down the road, minding my own business, just moving from one point to another.  All of the sudden, it’s there!  “Did you see that red Chevy truck?  That’s beautiful!  And, it’s for sale, too.”  The next thing I know, I’m calling the owner, taking a test drive, negotiating the price, and paying for a registration.  No research, no planning, no analyzing models or options; just making the purchase, without any hoopla or any stress.  That’s how I got the last truck, for which I had purchased two rebuilt transmissions within 10 months at a cost of over one thousand dollars apiece.  At that point, I started reading the reviews of the model and found that the transmission was “prone to failure under medium to heavy towing conditions.”  Well, duh!  

The old way of shopping had worked just fine for thirty-plus years of driving and purchasing vehicles, but maybe my analytical friends had a valid argument (you know who you are…). So, I started the research.  The replacement for the beautiful red disappointment had to be reliable, had to have a four-wheel drive (for pulling pianos up hills, wink-wink, nod-nod), and especially, it couldn’t eat transmissions.  I spent hours learning about models, checked the discussion boards, and talked with customers about their experience with certain trucks.  I even consulted Consumer Reports!  Finally, I made a decision.  The Toyota Tundra, which had no apparent appetite for transmissions, was the truck I needed.  All the evidence said the 2005 model would be everything I needed in a truck.  The search was on.  Local dealerships were called and asked to see if one was available or to find one in the price range determined to be appropriate (and affordable for me).  Newspapers were checked.  Craig’s List was consulted daily.  Nothing…Weeks passed, with no sign of one locally, so the search was extended.  Still nothing.

Finally, one night as I sat listing instruments to sell online, I made the fateful decision.  I would buy a truck on eBay!  As ridiculous as it sounds, many have done it with good results.  I found one in Atlanta and decided to buy it.  I first asked a question about the towing package.  They would get back to me.  The next day the call came.  “We can’t find that truck on our lot.”  How do you lose a full-size pickup truck?    I left them to figure out the mystery and moved on in my search, finally locating the truck I wanted in Fort Worth.  Yes, they actually could find the truck on their lot and would pick me up at the airport in Dallas if I would fly down.  The salesman met me at the airport and gave me one of the most frightening rides I have ever had in the state of Texas.  (Note to self:  Don’t ever ask for a ride from a Texas driver again!)   Heart rate back to normal, the truck examined and paperwork done, I was the proud and excited owner of a like-new 2005 Toyota Tundra Bluesteel-colored 4-wheel drive pickup.  No scratches, no dents, actually smelled like a new car (I know, they spray something inside them to give them that aura), and I was a happy camper as I headed up the highway to Arlington.

It had been a long time since breakfast and the peanuts on the plane ride weren’t going to hold me for long, so I made a quick stop for a Whopper at the Burger King just off the expressway.  Hunger satisfied and cholesterol rising, I climbed back into my beautiful truck, turning onto the road headed back for the highway.  As I approached the traffic signal a little too fast, I noticed the cars stopping quickly in front of me and I applied the brakes.  I was gratified when the truck slowed to a stop rapidly and at a safe distance from the car in front of me.  My satisfaction was short-lived though, as I heard the tires screaming behind me and then felt the impact of something slamming into the back of my beautiful truck.  The rear end of the truck went up slightly as whatever it was nose-dived under the bumper and came to a stop.  I got out expecting the worst, and wasn’t surprised to find a small import car buried under the bumper with its hood accordioned back to the windshield, and coolant gushing from a radiator ripped open by the impact.  Neither of the occupants of the car, two twenty-something young men, were hurt so we separated the vehicles, pulling onto the shoulder as I started to call the police.  “No don’t do that!” exclaimed the driver.  When I asked why I shouldn’t call, he replied, honestly enough, that he had some warrants out for his arrest.  I didn’t inquire any more about those (one doesn’t ask too many questions of a wanted man, you know), but surveying the damage to his car, and thinking about the possibility of hidden damage under mine, insisted on calling.

So, even though prudence might have dictated otherwise, I got the police department on the telephone. They asked two questions of me on the phone.  “Is anyone injured?”  When the answer was negative, the second query came, “Can the cars be driven?”  My truck, though sadly desecrated in my opinion, could certainly be driven, but I doubted the car would move.  I covered the mic on my phone and asked the young driver if it could be driven.  He answered quickly, “Absolutely!  I’ll drive it if I have to lean out the window to see! And, if he has to push,” jerking a thumb at his companion.  Quite obviously, he wanted to avoid any contact with the Police Department, so I answered in the affirmative to the dispatcher on the phone.  She reminded me to exchange insurance information and addresses and told me to, “Drive safely.”  We took care of the formalities and shook hands.  Then, the very relieved young men hastily jerked part of the bumper of the crippled car off the front, where it was dragging on the ground, leaving it lying in the gutter, shoved down on the pleated hood in an effort to see out the windshield (also badly cracked) and started off down the road, broken belts falling from underneath, metal shrieking against metal and steam boiling up from the engine as they turned the corner and limped out of sight.

I got into my besmirched truck and started toward home, forgoing the anticipated shopping, completely depressed because of the occurrence.  There was no damage visible, and a quick visit to my mechanic upon arrival home confirmed that there was no concealed damage either, but I would never look at that truck again as I did when I first bought it.  It was damaged goods to me, still fulfilling its function admirably, but with a strike against it.

I’ve always wondered about that.  We purchase an item and treat it as a treasure, protecting it, cherishing it, until the first blemish appears.  After that the respect, the honor, is diminished.  I remember my first new horn; how proud I was of it, polishing it constantly, carrying it gingerly.  Until that first ding arrived when I bumped it into the edge of a table as I was cleaning and oiling it.  After that, I just used the horn, without worry about any dings, cleaning it only when it needed attention and not obsessively, as when it was new.  Come to think of it, the horn was much more useful to me after that.  I wasn’t worried about the peripherals, but did whatever was necessary to maintain it simply as the tool it was.  Yes, a tool to make beautiful music, but just an implement nonetheless.  And, as I consider it, that truck was much the same.  I didn’t waste one day worrying about getting a scratch on it.  It pulled my piano trailer many, many trips; sometimes down back roads being scratched by overhanging bushes, and pelted by gravel as other vehicles passed, and I never cared.  When friends and family needed to borrow it, the keys were turned over cheerfully, with nary a word said about being careful not to park too near to other cars or taking care with the paint job.  It too, was a tool, fulfilling its purpose, without the need for coddling or nervous worry.

Not to belabor the point overmuch, but I’m wondering if our relationships are like that a little bit, too.  Kid gloves on, and stars in our eyes, we tiptoe around each other.  Until that first blemish appears; the first tiff, the first fault rears its head.  What, the toilet lid isn’t down?  Toothpaste squeezed and not rolled?  Yes, all these dings and more, maybe even a few major dents appear.  We get past those and make the relationship work, becoming comfortable with each other.  I like the comfortable stage.  Just one suggestion to keep in mind as the years pass, though…A little “spit and polish” doesn’t hurt once in awhile, even on the old model. Kind of keeps the brain remembering what the attraction was in the first place, you know…

“When hope is not pinned wriggling into a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.”
(Anne Lamott~American author)

Some days, the jumble in my mind makes it hard to concentrate on one thought long enough to acknowledge it, much less write about it.  You all know what I mean.  It’s like walking into a room with a notion, just the ghost of a reason for going in there, only to be completely overwhelmed with all the things that need to be achieved when you get there.  So, you stay and labor for ten minutes, half an hour, maybe even hours, completing more than one task that was just begging to be addressed.  Then, a few moments after you exit the room, you realize that your original purpose for going in there wasn’t even started, much less accomplished.

So I sit and mull over first one idea and then another, giving attention to each for a few moments, only to let it fall to the floor of my mind, moving to others in the hopes that one might be worthy of further deliberation.  I wish I could tell you it was like going through a room of file cabinets, each neatly labeled on the front, giving me easy access to the subject, or era, or even a specific occurrence.  Alas, that is not the case.  You see, the file room of my brain is definitely more like Fibber McGee’s closet than like any library’s card catalog system.  And, as if to prove my point, both references in the last sentence are to long forgotten locales, McGee’s closet a relic from the golden age of radio and the card catalog a memento of an era past, which disappeared from use in most libraries sometime in the late twentieth century.

As it turns out, I have both systems in use daily at my workplace.  When the local university decided to replace its outdated system with the modern equivalent, contained on hard drives and flash drives, and servers, the Lovely Lady decided that her husband and her brother needed a project on which to work.  With many more hours of labor than I anticipated and after the application of a few too many Band-aids to my hands, the card catalogs became file drawers for CD accompaniment tracks.  They grace the walls of our music store today, a testament to the ingenuity of the Lovely Lady and the determination of one bumbling husband and one skillful brother-in-law.  Every time a customer places an order in our online store for the tracks they need, whether it be for one or thirty, we go to the files, selecting the drawer (alphabetically arranged, of course!  They are library files, after all) corresponding to their request and pull the (hopefully) correct title.  We, and by “we” I mean the Lovely Lady, are duteous, almost to a fault, in keeping the drawers in order and arranged neatly, in anticipation of the next customer’s wish list to be fulfilled.

On the other extreme, there are the filing systems for which I am responsible; Fibber’s closet, if you will.  I’ve discussed my desk, that landing place for objects as diverse as Allen wrenches, or trumpet mouthpieces, guitar tuners, and invoices; not to mention returned merchandise and trade magazines.  We could go around the corner to the Layaway/small parts/spare case storage area, only slightly less cluttered than my desk.  Then there is the container room, dedicated to packaging of all sorts.  Friends donate packing materials; they end up there.  I purchase shipping boxes; they end up there.  Have an item that isn’t suitable for sale in the store, but that might be good on eBay?  It ends up there.  Last night, as I left the store, I noticed a couple of guitar boxes in the hallway and, knowing that the cleaning crew would be here earlier than I this morning, carried them to the door of the container room and shoved them blindly in.  As they settled into place, I heard an ominous crash from further back into the void.  Someday, we’ll find out what that was.  Oh, hey!  We mustn’t forget the storage barn, moved in a few years ago to help with overflow of instruments and shelving.  I walked into it today and was amazed at the lack of space available for my use.  No, it’s not a small building, measuring twelve feet wide by thirty-six feet long.  It’s just that over the last three years, I’ve filled it with things too important to throw away, but not essential enough to have in constant use.

Sound familiar?  Yeah, all of those messy spaces are amazingly similar to the jumble in my mind.  And, I really don’t have any clear idea of what to write about tonight.  So, you’re in luck!  You can forgo the customary reading of my normally salient writing today.  Talk about a fortuitous development!

The mind does run on, and often takes the fingers with it.  Perhaps the filing system could get straightened up a bit before the next post.  Come back tomorrow and we’ll give it a shot…

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?”
(Laurence J. Peter~American educator & writer~1919-1990)

The young lady pushed her way into the shop, lugging an old guitar case, not realizing that she was carrying an armload of nostalgia for this aging man, raised as I was in the mid-twentieth century.  I had been expecting her arrival, since she had called earlier to see if I was interested in the guitar, but I wasn’t prepared for the trip down memory lane that the beautiful instrument evoked.  When I opened the seventy-year old case, the name just jumped out at me; “Gene Autry”, the cursive letters spelled, scrolling gracefully along the fingerboard in a script made to look like a rope lasso on either end.  Gene Autry.  The name brings back memories of cowboy movies, and cowboy television shows, and cowboy songs.  Well, even a few songs we don’t always associate with the King of Cowboys, but we sing them every year.  Before Gene, no one had ever sung about that mythical reindeer with a red nose, who went by the name of Rudolf.  Although he didn’t write that song, he did pen “Here Comes Santa Claus”, as well as making “Frosty the Snowman” a huge success.  Is it any wonder that they made beautiful instruments with his name on them?

I remember reading Gene Autry adventure books, based on his radio and television shows, which exemplified honor and fairness, along with a good dose of gun play and suspense thrown in.  What red-blooded American kid could resist the animated narrative, which fed on the dreams and imagination born of a partial knowledge of our not-so-distant history.  I say partial, because the romantic version we were fed was a good bit shy of the full truth of life on the range.  Hunger and hardship were the rule rather than the exception, with no laws and little protection from malicious enemies, save the rifle and side-arm, which the cowboy carried, not for enjoyment, but for survival.  It was not romantic in any sense of the word, but our short memory made it so and every one of us would have happily abandoned our tame life of school and church and family for a shot at it.

At that time, our understanding of the life of the perpetual foe of the cowboy, the Indian, was a bit askew as well.  We have come to learn, in the ensuing years, of the hardship these native Americans endured, much of it at the hands of a power and land hungry new nation, ready to use trickery and force to achieve its goals.  Yes, there were unspeakable atrocities committed by the Indians, but the same must be said of the new residents who, in large part, viewed the natives as sub-human and herded them into strange lands, allowing many to die of starvation and disease along the way.  Is it any wonder then, that the Cowboys and Indians were pitted against each other, both in fact and in legend?

I’m chuckling as I write this; not because of the history of sadness and bad blood between the two races, but because we think nothing today of the two living side by side.  On any given day in my store, you may see Cherokee men and women looking at instruments and printed music, right beside the Cowboys of our day, the rough and rugged men and women we have dubbed “rednecks”.  Cowboy boots, sometimes a cowboy hat (more often a NASCAR cap these days) and jeans; all the regalia of the range rider of old, but there are no drawn guns, no scalps taken, just music made and polite words spoken.

For several months now, we’ve also been privileged to have on display in our store, some very fine Native American flutes.  Hand made by a good friend of the Lovely Lady and myself, they are amazing instruments of beauty, both aesthetically and musically.  Wonderful creations of highly flamed maple and dark-grained walnut, the haunting melodies which emerge when blown skillfully (not by me!) are reminiscent of another civilization.  They are a constant source of conversation and admiration, both of the concept and implementation of an ages-old art.  The Indians have been making these for generation after generation, long before our ancestors set foot on these shores.  It’s apropos that they live in harmony, side by side with the cowboy inspired instruments and western-style music so popular in our culture.

The beautiful Gene Autry guitar now belongs to the music store, awaiting restoration to its earlier glory.  I doubt that it will ever be pristine, nor do I think it will achieve legendary status as a money-making investment, but I’m grateful for the memories of days of cowboy boots, fringed vests, and cap guns, if nothing else.  It was a different time, with fewer deadlines to meet, more fun things to do, and a whole lot less stress. 

Maybe it’s time to teach the grandkids some new (old) games.  I wonder if they’ll want to be the Cowboys, or the Indians…

“I’m back in the saddle again;
Out where a friend is a friend;
Where the longhorn cattle feed
On the lowly gypsum weed;
Back in the saddle again.”

Rain is falling and the lightning flashes periodically.  Rumbles of thunder resound, sending the family dog under the storage shed seeking a hiding place.  I know that he has a good strong house, but for some reason, he isn’t reassured by the plastic structure with only two plastic flaps between him and the turmoil from the skies.  So, he cowers in the dirt under the shed.  Maybe he’s the smart one.

Like many of you, I’ve watched the video footage of the horrific earthquake in Japan over the last few days.  The one thought that I can’t shake is how exposed we are, in spite of our illusion of protection.  In the earthquake, strong buildings, the very places you would think you should run into when in danger, become death traps, with objects falling from shelves, pieces of the ceiling crashing down, even whole buildings collapsing on themselves.  Outside isn’t much better.  The resulting tsunami, huge waves caused by the earth’s movement, tosses cars around like toys, crushing buildings, battering bridges and skyscrapers alike, leaving in it’s path nothing but destruction and death.

A false sense of security.  How many times have we seen confidence shattered as the unsinkable, unbeatable, and invincible are swept away by circumstances and powers beyond our control?  Billions of dollars are lost as stock markets fall and money invested in “can’t miss” acquisitions turns out to be nothing more than speculation and fool’s gold.  A ship that can’t be sunk goes down on its maiden voyage, sunk by something that was unseen until moments before the impact.  The greatest military might in the world is defeated by an upstart country of 13 small colonies and virtually no trained military men.

We even put our trust in men and women who turn out to be frauds.  More than that, those who have proven to be trustworthy for years and years stumble and founder.  Marriages fail after twenty, thirty, even forty years, destroyed by unfaithfulness.  People we respect lose their moral compasses, pursuing paths completely inconsistent with their past and their verbal affirmations.  Our faith in humans is shaken again and again.

Am I preaching?  It would appear so, since the tenor of this post seems to be pointing out our misplaced trust in all the wrong things.  Man-made things, whether they be structures or temperaments, buildings or character traits, are all flawed in their framework.  The idea that a thing conceived and made by a broken creature can endure in the face of the power and testing of the Creator is ridiculous in its foundational principle.  As the power of the forces pitted against it are unleashed, the cracks and flaws in the design and construction will always be brought to light.

When we trust in the might of men, we trust in a shadow, a puff of smoke.  It is here today, gone into the ether tomorrow.  My mind can’t help but be directed to our national motto, printed on our coins since the middle of the nineteenth century.  Much maligned in recent years; possibly on the brink of extinction in our current course, it is, nonetheless, still the only sane course for fallen man.  “In God We Trust.”

Francis Scott Key penned the words in 1814, and we know them today as our National Anthem.  The words which inspired our national motto read:
“And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Congress, in 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, a terrifying period in our history, with more than ample cause to acknowledge the erroneousness of trust in man’s institutions, shortened the phrase from that powerful verse and had the words “In God We Trust” stamped on the two-cent coin for the first time in U.S. history.  I have the priviledge to possess one of these coins, and it never fails to move me powerfully when I hold it in my hand and think of that horrible time in our nation’s history, but also the simple faith of our leaders in an all powerful God, who values truth and justice above all of our petty desires.  The coin is worn and dirty, passed from hand to hand for a century and a half, with almost no monetary value, but the motto is still there, reminding that in spite of our shortcomings, our stupidity, and our arrogance; the wisdom, and strength, and love of our Creator trumps our weakness every time.  I don’t think I could part with it for any amount of money.

Had enough of the preaching?  Okay, I’m coming down from behind the pulpit in a moment.  Just one more reminder:  The psalmist knew whereof he spoke when he penned the words in Psalms 20:7.  “Some trust in chariots and horses.  We trust in the name of the Lord, our God.”

That said, I’m still headed indoors during this storm.  I do know enough to come in out of the rain…

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
(Alexander Pushkin~ Russian Poet~1799-1837)

“But courage, child!  We are all between the paws of the true Aslan.”
(C.S. Lewis)

I stood in the pawn shop and bargained with the old man.  He had a story for every instrument I picked up, one of them acquired from the school-aged child of a  friend, another belonging originally to a great street musician who had played all over Kansas City for years, still another one coming to the shop because of a divorce.  The garrulous fellow needed to make a sale, so he kept talking, knowing that sooner or later the young man from the small town down south would find at least one instrument he couldn’t resist.  He was correct.

I’ve told you about my trips to other towns, searching for merchandise to resell.  I was on the road again, this time up to Kansas City, both in Missouri and Kansas.  I had exhausted the usual shops I knew of and was just driving aimlessly, when I happened upon the large, dilapidated building in the mostly deserted downtown area of Kansas City on the Kansas side of the border.  The man running the shop told me that the original owner had been his boss, but had died and the family had sold him the declining business.  He and his elderly wife, a thin, angular lady with a disapproving look in her eyes, ran the dumpy establishment, just biding their time until retirement.  As I talked with him, he invited me to stick around that evening to go to the casino with him and play the games of chance.  Evidently he was a regular at one of the “riverboats” north and east on the Missouri River and received some sort of recompense for recruiting new patrons for them.  I let him know that I wasn’t a gambler and turned the conversation back to the instruments.  It would only take a an hour or two to prove how wrong I was.

As we looked through the hundreds of instruments he had in the dimly lighted, ramshackle place, the customers started to pile up at the counter.  It was Saturday, the busiest day of the week for pawnbrokers, and the folks were waiting to pay the interest on their loans.  A few had items to hock, others wandered around, looking at items for sale.  The only other employee in the place was his harried wife, who did the best she could while he worked on making a sale to me.  It was obvious that her best wasn’t enough for the other customers, but he ignored them and her, pressing me to buy first one junky horn, then another.  Finally, he brought out his crown jewel, a battered tenor saxophone owned, he informed me, by a locally famous jazz player, who had lost the saxophone when he hit hard times and couldn’t pay the loan off.  As I looked at the instrument, the brand name and model number rang a bell.  Little did I know at that time that the bell they rang would awake the gambler in me.  It would be a losing hand.

I remembered the horn from legendary stories about the men who played it.  I was sure I had seen the sales figures in the thousands for it, so I wasn’t surprised when he quoted me a price of three thousand dollars.  Nor was I going to pay that price.  We bargained as the line grew longer at the counter, his wife calling him several times as the negotiations progressed.  Ignoring her, he pressed me to a final price.  Twenty-one hundred dollars, a deal if I had ever seen one!  This horn, the Mark Seven was worth more than twice the price!  As his wife screamed at him from the counter, I told him that I would take it!  I handed him the cash and walked out of the shop, ignoring the angry scowls, both from his wife and the neglected patrons in line.  I was going to make a lot of money on this purchase!  Nothing else mattered at that moment.

I’ve heard it many times; the odds are always stacked in the house’s favor, and this time was no exception.  As I drove south toward home, my mind on the transaction and the horn itself, I suddenly had a glimmer of an unsettling thought.  Mark Seven?  Was that the right model number?  Could it have been the Mark Six that was the Holy Grail of the saxophone market and not the Mark Seven?  With those questions in my mind, I found a telephone and called the Lovely Lady in the music store with my suspicion.  She confirmed the awful truth.  The horn I had just purchased for a huge amount of money was not worth anything close to what I had paid.  I was devastated.

I found myself wondering why I hadn’t just taken the old fellow up on his invitation to go to the casino on the river.  At least I wouldn’t have lost as much money as I did.  Missouri has a  law that only allows you to buy up to five hundred dollars worth of chips every two hours in a casino, giving you time to repent of your losses before throwing more money away.  I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have lost any more than the eight hundred dollars I eventually lost on that horn when I finally sold it.

Over the intervening years, I’ve had time to reconsider my original reaction.  I was angry at myself, believing that my irresponsible purchase was just as bad as throwing away money on a game of chance.  But, I see more clearly now that the difference is that I could take steps to insure that the uneducated expenditure of cash never was repeated in making a purchase.  When you’re a gambler, a real gambler, no amount of education will make you a winner.  Gamblers keep making the same mistake again and again, playing into the hands of the house.  Their mistake?  Walking into the casino with money in their pockets, believing that they will walk out with more than they had to start with.  Is there a chance that will happen?  Sure, a very small chance.  But, I guarantee the only sure bet you can make is the one you choose not to make.

When I walk into a shop with money in my pocket these days, I carry a safeguard against the ignorance that made me a gambler instead of a shopper that day in Kansas City.  I have a subscription to a Blue Book service which tells me instantly whether the instrument is the one I’m remembering and whether the price is a fair one or not. You see, I do learn from some of my mistakes.

No more gambling for me, thanks!  What’s that you say?  You’ve got an insurance policy to sell me?  Yeah right!  Like an earthquake will ever hit here…

“Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.”
(Wilson Mizner~American playwright~ 1876-1933)

“…For by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.”
(2 Peter 2:19~NAS)

The man walked in the front door and browsed around the music store.  After a period of time, he began to engage me in conversation.  He wasn’t a musician, but several in his family had been.  At one point in the conversation, he remarked, “My uncle plays the piano by ear.”  I couldn’t resist the opening and said, with a twinkle in my eye, “That’s nothing, my grandpa fiddled with his beard.”  Unfortunately, either his sense of humor wasn’t on the same wavelength with mine, or the double meaning just went over his head, so the conversation faltered and he left soon thereafter. 

I am a lover of jokes, more specifically of plays on words.  Frequently these are puns, at other times just a clever turn of a phrase, but I do tend to go a bit overboard with them.  Mealtimes at our house are a joy for me, pure torture for others at the table, since as a captive audience they must endure the best (worst?) of my repertoire.  I have enjoyed a good joke as long as I can remember, especially if I am the one telling it.  As a teenager, I was the bane of the existence of any number of teachers in school.  I’m not sure if I would have been called the class clown, but I loved the attention gained by being the jokester.  I still post a joke almost daily to my Facebook friends, either for their enjoyment or dismay.  To a punster, a groan is just as good as a guffaw, so I’m not sure it matters what the response is, as long as the jokes are read.

You would think that being a joke-lover would mean that I am basically a jolly person, but that’s not necessarily true.  Often a sense of humor can hide depression and sadness.  I wouldn’t describe myself as depressed, but I frequently have “down” periods and the jokes just keep coming.  I suppose a psychologist would say I was compensating.  I realized again today that there is something to this theory.  I had taken a little nap after supper and awoke to notice that the television was on one of these hoarding shows.  You know the ones I’m talking about;  the perfectly normal appearing folks who secretly have filled their homes with junk and even collectibles they cannot get rid of for anything.  I was struck by the honesty of one of the hoarders on the show.  She admitted that she did this to make up for being a failure in her own eyes.  She was successful at collecting a mountain of things, so the failures at other things; marriage, school, and parenting no longer loomed larger than life in her eyes.

Now, I’m not a hoarder of possessions.  If anything, I throw away too much, possibly for fear of becoming one.  I am a hoarder of attention, though.  It’s a common problem, wanting to be the center of attention.  It’s encouraged in our culture.  We push our children to perform, starting with the baby’s abilities we must demonstrate with shared pictures and phone calls.  It continues through all ages, children in pageants, in sports events, in dance and music recitals, and on and on.  We reward the exhibitionist mindset with publicity, monetary awards, and fame.  Is it any wonder that so many of our stars self-destruct just as spectacularly as they came to notoriety? 

Early in my life, a classmate (who later became an excellent teacher) helped me to understand my tendency to seek attention and approval.  I have never forgotten the lesson, even if I have not always heeded it.  We were in Mrs. Brunson’s third grade class and had a drawing assignment.  I have no idea what we were drawing, only that I was extremely proud of my creation.  Instead of waiting for someone to compliment it, I circulated through the class asking, “Isn’t that a crummy job of drawing?”  Fortunately, Susie was in one of the first groups I approached.  With a wisdom beyond her years, she replied,  “No Paul, I think you just want us to say how good it is; don’t you?”  I was crestfallen, realizing that a girl had seen right through me, but I certainly got the message.  Now, years later, I still recall her words frequently, and they have encouraged me to analyze my motivations in many situations.  Am I still an attention hound?  Yeah, I do tend to be, but there is a good bit of tempering of that penchant.  The most important change is the ability to simply do what I do without needing the strokes of adoring fans.  I don’t mind the “atta-boy” comments that come once in awhile (we all need a few of those), but they are no longer what determine my actions.

It doesn’t hurt any to have a full-time fan living in the same house.  I can always count on the Lovely Lady for applause and criticism, both of which make me a better person.  You should all be so lucky.

“Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to draw attention to their shining; they just shine.”
(Dwight L Moody~American evangelist~1837-1899)

“What a banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have – leisure and a quiet mind.”
(Henry David Thoreau~American essayist and poet~1817-1862)

I fidgeted as I sat under the suspicious stare of the bank vice-president.  I was only 24 years old and still believed that the world was mine to conquer, so I shrugged off the awkward feeling and set about to convince the keeper-of-the-treasury that my request was worth considering.  We wanted to buy a second car and needed less than a thousand dollars to make the purchase.  The problem was that the car was well over the limitation for age which the bank had set for car loans.  Put plainly, the 13-year old car couldn’t be financed.  I was aware of the restraint before I took my seat in the loan office, but I was prepared.  I had a sure-fire, can’t-miss offer to make the bank, an offer on which I was sure they would be happy to take me up.

After the scornful start to the interview however, I wasn’t sure.  I think it may have had something to do with my haircut…well, the lack thereof would be more to the point.  I was at a time in my young life when I believed that what a person looked like should have no bearing on his worth as a human being.  I still think that, but I understand that the packaging presents an image to those who must have some standard by which to determine the trust-worthiness or stability of their investments.  This is still true today, just as it was way back then. My mom would say it like this, “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”  In other words, sometimes our individuality takes a backseat to expediency.  When I was young though, you couldn’t tell me anything, so the nearly shoulder-length hair was proudly in evidence.  Of course, I was new in town and had wooed and won one of the finest young ladies here, so there might have been a lingering resentment over that too.  Regardless, I was fighting an uphill battle at this point, so I pulled out my offer, which I knew he couldn’t refuse.

“You’ll take collateral, won’t you?” I asked.  “Of course, if you have something of value to put up, we’ll consider it,” came the doubtful answer.  I knew I had him!  “I have a six-month old Conn French Horn, worth fifteen hundred dollars.  It’s a Conn 8D, one of the top horns made today.”  It was over!  Now he had to give me the loan!

Oh, it was over all right!  The arrogant young executive laughed in my face.  “There’s no tin horn in the world worth fifteen hundred dollars!” he exclaimed.  “That’s not collateral.  Your request is denied.”  I walked out of that bank, disappointed and angry, never to do business with them again.

I have repeated that story more than a time or two over the last twenty years, dwelling on the man’s ignorance and conceit, as I concluded my story by telling of going to a competing bank in town and being given a loan on only my signature, with no collateral asked for.  I’ve paid many thousands of dollars in interest personally and professionally in the intervening time, money which the other bank could have added to their coffers if the loan officer had been willing to do a little research.  Now, I’m not saying that they have missed me at all, but I’d like to think that I’ve had the last laugh.  It’s my little illusion, so don’t spoil it for me, okay?

In fairness, I have made my share of similar missteps, in particular one a couple of years ago, when a fellow music retailer walked into my shop with a battered guitar case in his hand.  He asked me if I would sell the guitar for him on Ebay.  I opened the case and laughed.  “A Gibson Les Paul Junior!  That guitar never saw the day it was worth three hundred dollars.”  He looked at me in surprise and said, “I think you may be a little mistaken, Paul.  They’re going for a good bit more than that.”  I laughed a while longer and agreed to sell the instrument for whatever the bids came in at, promising him the balance after I took a predetermined commission.  I took pictures and started the auction, convinced that the pittance the 3/4-size student guitar would bring wouldn’t pay for my time to prepare the sale.  Nevertheless, he was a friend, so I dutifully fulfilled my promise to him.

Seven days later, I owed the man over four thousand dollars!  The market was significantly stronger for that little student guitar than I had ever considered.  I swallowed my pride and called him to give him the good news and had a little side-dish of crow.  As I did, my mind drifted back to that day in the bank and I realized that anyone can make uneducated decisions.  It’s especially nice when redemption is also an option, through no merit of your own.  Because of changes over the years, it’s no longer a possibility, but in retrospect, I might even have given that bank vice-president a second chance, realizing my own propensity for ignorant choices.

Oh, I sold that French Horn a couple of years ago, over 25 years after my rejection in the bank.  Selling price for the “tin horn”?  Fifteen hundred dollars.  It’s a small comfort, but it is nice to know that I’m not always wrong…

 “I have been Foolish and Deluded,” said he, “and I am a Bear of no Brain at All.”
(Winnie-the-Pooh)

“In the process of trial and error, our failed attempts are meant to destroy arrogance and provoke humility.”
(Jin Kwon~South Korean martial arts master)