I have several guitars. All of them are special to me, and meaningful in various ways, because of when I bought them, or the circumstances of the purchase, or perhaps my reasons for making the purchase. I own a ‘Martin’ guitar because, when I was 16, I played a friend’s Martin guitar and fell in love with the tone and ‘feel’ of it. All my life, that was my ‘fantasy guitar’. Years later, I was able to purchase a Martin guitar and add it to my collection. It is one of my favorites, and I do love the tone and feel of playing it.
Along the way, I also discovered ‘Taylor’ guitars, and loved the rich tones they produced, and the ease with my fingers could pluck the strings and make what sounded to MY ears at least, very nice music. So, when the opportunity came along to purchase one, I added a Taylor to my collection as well, and it occupies a prominent place in my ‘regularly played’ group of guitars.
The Martin and Taylor are both acoustic-electric guitars, a type of guitar that didn’t exist as far as I knew when I first began playing. I now have about 8 or 9 of that type. I also own a couple of purely acoustic guitars and a few electric guitars. One of the electric guitars I own, my most recent purchase, is a red Epiphone, and she (yes I refer to my guitars for the most part as ‘she’s’) is special for several reasons. For one thing, it says right on her headstock ‘Special’, so there’s no doubt about that! Her name, by the way, is Leslie (yes, most of my guitars do have names as well, because they have personalities of their own).
Leslie is special, however, not simply because the word is printed on her headstock, and because she is **red**, but also because she is a rescue guitar. I found her in a pawn shop, being sold for very little money. At first, I was going to simply write her off, because I figured (rightly so) that if a pawn shop was selling a ‘name brand’ guitar (and Epiphone, while not a top of the line brand, does typically make decent equipment) that cheaply, then something had to be seriously wrong with her. She was a bit dirty, but otherwise *looked* ok. There wasn’t any really visible damage, but there also was no place to plug her in and try her out. After all, she is an electric guitar, so the electronics component is a pretty big factor in her usability.
But then I picked her up. Even though there were no electronics, when I held her, played her strings, I could feel a connection, something that told me I would enjoy playing this guitar. So, I took a chance. Without knowing what was wrong with her, I bought her and brought her home. When I plugged her into an amplifier, nothing. So, out came the screwdrivers, taking her apart and digging into the electronics. I found she had a few loose connections internally, was able to secure the connections, put her back together, plug her in and then voila! music to my ears, literally, as the sounds came blaring out of the speaker. I was able to strum, pick, make music with her, and it felt so good, so effortless. Leslie just seemed to be made for me. I took her to the guitar shop, had the action professionally adjusted so that she was even better to play, and now she is my favorite electric guitar to play, though I spent the least on her.
Leslie is special to me, because I found her in a somewhat ‘last chance’ condition. Someone might have bought her as a ‘parts’ guitar and taken pieces to fix other guitars. I could have missed out on her if I had not picked her up. I wonder how many times we miss out on things, on people, because we make the assumption they are damaged goods, and not worth the effort to find out. Perhaps some of the best things in life aren’t the ones we pay top dollar for, but the ones we invest our own time and energy into developing, and giving them a chance to show just how special they really are. Maybe the best friendships are those we might have totally missed if we hadn’t looked past what appeared to be the fatal flaws, and found they offered us more than we could have expected. Maybe in some ways we’re all ‘rescue’ people, flawed and imperfect, but also special, if only someone looks closely.
I have been ‘rescued’ a time or two myself; maybe that’s why Leslie and I work — we’re 2 of a kind: both imperfect, but both wanting to show that we really are ‘special’ in our own ways.