Charlie

Daily writing prompt

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

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When I was a kid, my Dad was the Maintenance supervisor for a company in New York City. We lived in a basement apartment in one of the buildings. One of my earliest jobs was roaming the building the day we lit the incinerator and ensuring all the smaller trash went into the hopper. We sorted through larger items for their salvage or scrap value.

One week, one of the items found was an old, badly abused Stella guitar. My Grandfather had been a classical and popular music guitarist, and I had listened for years to family talking about his musical skills. Looking it over, my father asked me if I wanted it. Of course, I did.

Immediately, I began inflicting random noise on my family that I thought was terrific. My musical efforts, the guitar, and I were exiled to a small storage room. The expectation was I’d tire of noise-making in a week or two. Instead, I went to a music store, bought a copy of “The Folksingers Guitar Guide,” and began learning chords.

A Stella guitar, perhaps, can be made into a decent musical instrument. But by the time we found mine, fixing it was not possible. Seeing that I was serious about learning guitar, my parents gave me my Harmony Classical guitar next Christmas. Charlie rests on a stand no more than one foot from me as I write this. We’ve been together for over sixty years, played in coffeehouses and bars, and hitched all over. In the old parlance – we’ve been to see the elephant.

We both are just a bit tired and worn. But may still have some mileage left in us.