The General Store

Ok, so I had no idea it had been so long since I had written you a story. None at all. I thought I had missed maybe 2 or 3, but not this long. I apologize for that and will do my best to keep up better. It is a busy time when what feels like one month is actually three. Woops.

I am on a roll. My guitar body is glued together, I am halfway through securing binding onto its sides. While I pull strips of tape from the industrial dispenser, nicking my knuckles on its angry serrated edge in the process, I am planning what I need to do next. Around 11:45am, my dad walks into the shop and says, "I want some breakfast. Want to go to Sarah's?" I check the time and while I have been working for several hours, my breakfast having been consumed at breakfast time, I say yes. I stop what I am working on and go.

I used to say no thanks when my dad asked me to accompany him to get breakfast at his favorite local general store because I didn't want to eat at that odd time between breakfast and lunch. I now understand he goes for so much more than just breakfast. Fox Creek Trading Post has been in operation for generations and one of the things I love about it is that, like Rugby itself, not much has changed. The shelves lining the walls that reach all the way to the ceiling are still piled with goods, clothing, and toys. I found a doll dressed as a nun, some dusty cigar boxes on a top shelf and a sign advertising shoe polish among the dishes, aprons and canned goods lining the dining area in the back of the store. Sarah Teitelbaum runs the old store and while she isn't originally from here, which is typically comparable to sporting a scarlet A in the eyes of locals, she has made herself a spot in the history of this tiny pocket of VA. It doesn't hurt that she's "good lookin'" (my dad says) and that she treats everyone who comes through her door as though they are the most important person in the county, but she has created a gathering place where folks can congregate and hear the scuttlebutt. I love that like generations before us, we still crave that sense of community and we are still fiercely protective of it.

Cigar boxes on the shelves of Fox Creek Trading Post

I remember when I was young Vivian Osborne ran the local store. My Great Uncle Cone, a man who had one of the most wrinkled faces I had ever seen, would sit quietly by the window closest to the wood stove and smoke most of the day away. He and his cronies would gather in the back of the store every morning for coffee and then the guys with jobs would leave only to return as soon as they were finished for a game of Rook or checkers. "My dad used to love to come in here. Every day after he got the farming and drove the school bus, he would come in here and play cards with his friends," my dad told me once. I remember being somewhat frightened of the posse of old men, thinking that their dealings were secret and probably important so I best keep my distance.

Old and new.

When my dad and I walked in to Vivian's, he would ceremoniously present me with one dollar to spend in the store. While he opened his wallet he would always tell me how he had never seen a dollar at my age and then would proceed to point out all the things he could have purchased with a dime. I always wanted a scratch off lottery ticket and my dad would make a big show of saying I was too young and there was no way Vivian would sell me one. While my dad chatted with his neighbors, I would tentatively approach the counter, which obscured my view of what was hidden behind it as it rose to exactly my eye level. The scratched laminated pad sitting atop the counter advertising the tobacco products offered, yellowed with age, curled up at the edges closes to me. Vivian would wait patiently for me to make ask her for a lottery ticket. Eventually I would and she would allow me to choose which one I wanted, usually the most colorful one. I would walk away ecstatic, as though I had gotten away with something, though in hindsight, she probably had a standing arrangement with my dad. He would give me a penny to scratch with, but I never used it, opting for my fingernail instead. It was so much more satisfying, scratching that shiny later away to reveal the prize underneath.

When my dad was young Vivian's husband Van Osborne ran the store. He said it was just the same as when I was growing up, the old men sitting around playing checkers and cards, discussing things like price you could get for tobacco and how high the price for chicken feed had risen. Last night when my dad and I sat by ourselves in his shop I asked him what he remembered about the store when he was  young. He said, "When I was young you couldn't go anywhere else but the store because driving to town was reserved for special occasions. You could get whatever you needed there. People would even come in and ask for haircuts. Van would gesture to the barber chair he had sitting in the back room and he would cut their hair. Once a man named Brack Davis, probably some kin to us, walked in and pointed to his tooth. Didn't say anything, not that I heard anyway. Van gestured to the barber chair and Brack walked over and sat down. Van took a pair of pliers and yanked that tooth out! You never saw so much blood. Brack spit a few times into the coal bucket, said thank you to Van, settled up, and left. That was when that store was in the building where my old shop used to be. Another thing folks used to do was have shooting matches. They would get a circle of cardboard and draw lines facing out like spokes on a wheel and attach it to the wall with a nail. Everyone would write their names on the wheel and then someone would spin it so fast the names would blur. Then someone would shoot at the spinning wheel and whoever's name it hit got the pot. Uncle Cone told me that during wartime when there weren't any bullets to shoot and the guys still wanted to play that game, they would do it with a knife. There's a big ol' hole where the knife blade would hit the wall. It is still there in the wall of my old shop."

Sarah needed a table for her coffee pot, my dad went home and made her one

We pass a few other little stores on the way out to Sarah's. I think the reason for that is because she not only appreciates that sense of community, she builds and nurtures it. She doesn't mind that a fellow with nothing better to do comes in every morning and sits by the counter all day buying nothing but coffee. She is happy to oblige all of our requests from breakfast at noon to a sandwich on her menu that, without prompting, she always remembers exactly how I like it. Guys come in on their lunch break and she offers them the chicken and dumplings she just made from scratch, the barbecue she smokes herself, or a fresh sandwich.

When I asked Sarah about running that store she said, "I love that this store has stood here and served this community for so many generations. Jerry, the guy who drives the school bus came in recently and told me that he bought his first suit in this store with his grandfather in 1945. The other day I found a dusty old ledger on one of the top shelves and I found where he had bought that suit for $15. Now his grandkids come in here. How many generations is that? 6? I think that is just great." It is obvious she isn't in this for profit, though I'm sure she must make some given how many folks she serves every day. She puts thought and love into her cooking and provides excellent service. Those are two things that are greatly lacking around here now that our grandmother's have passed on. Now if you own a freezer and a deep fryer, you're in business. I think most everyone can see how hard she works to serve the community before she serves herself and thats a big reason why, in the time of high mobility, we prefer to drive a bit farther to see her and her helper Judy, her daughter Allyson as well as her parents who live down the street from the store. I hope that one day I will be able to bring my kids in there and present them with some money while telling them what I could buy with the dollar my dad used to give me. It was always worth so much more than the monetary value.

The general loafers.

45s

Last week my fingers hurt. For several days, the pads on my thumbs, index, and middle fingers ached where I had pushed abalone pieces through a tiny table saw, then rubbed the side of each piece on 120 grit sandpaper in order to fit them into channels in the top, back, and sides of a guitar. After a while of fitting, breaking, and gluing the pieces I started to think nobody needs a 45 style guitar. I mean really.

A few months ago I agreed to help my dad with a copy of a Martin D-45 so I could learn how to do the extra pearl work involved in order to make them myself. The way Martin describes their models is with a number following the size (D for dreadnought, 0, 00, 000) corresponding roughly to the amount of ornamentation involved in each model. For example, a 17 has no binding, 18 has simple wood lines next to the binding, 28 has wooden herringbone purfling next to the binding. A 41 style guitar has abalone shell set into a channel winding around the top and in a ring around the sound hole of a guitar. A 42 has that same abalone as a 41 as well as a line surrounding the fingerboard where it overlaps on the top of the guitar. A 45 style guitar has the 42 style top as well as abalone around the back, sides, along the end piece, and where the neck joins the body. And in this case, my dad added two stripes along the backstripe as well. If you want to read more about my experience with binding, you can here. 

My tiny table saw.

To make this guitar a bit more special than his typical 45, my dad asked me to use real pieces of abalone, not Abalam, the long sheets of veneer layered together which are much easier to work with and also easier to come by. So for hours I sat at the tiny table saw and ran countless abalone pieces through, slicing off pieces a couple of millimeters wide. I made use of the 120 grit sticky-back sandpaper I bought a while back and stuck a piece on a stool next to me. I scrubbed the pieces across the paper, sanding the bottom edge off of each piece so it would more easily fit into the channel I had created by removing the teflon strip that was initially glued next to the binding.

The sides were the most challenging channels to fit abalone into as, if you haven't done the math, the abalone strips are solid and straight, while the side of a guitar is a curved surface. I broke the pieces every eighth inch or so, and then glued the broken piece into place with superglue, then repeated the breaking and gluing as I wound around the guitar. Along with perfect mitre joints where the pearl meets an edge, there are also special joints where the end piece meets the sides. Each piece of abalone is filed into a point then notched into the abalone running along the side. Doesn't sound all that difficult, eh? Well you're wrong. It took a while to make sure the angles of my notches and the pieces they fit into matched exactly to there was no space between the joints.

Look close, I am kind of proud of those joints.

Now, while I was feeling sorry for the state of my fingers, I asked my dad what he remembered about making his first 45 style guitar. It is his number 7, the one he was so proud of and eventually sold to moonshiners for $500 and now has a bullet hole in its back. He told me that he looked at a songbook he borrowed from one of my uncle Max's  coworkers featuring photographs of Red Smiley and Don Reno and Red's D-45.

The fellow who lent my dad the songbook was named Jim Poe. He bought the first 42 my dad made, his #5 guitar, for $50. At that time my dad hadn't seen a 42 or 45 in person, but his cousin claimed the pearl was surrounded on both sides with gold. Thinking back, my dad said he must have thought that because the lacquer had stained the light colored wood pieces that line the abalone making it appear gold with time. In any event, my dad ordered 1 mm thick brass strips from a wood supply company to glue next to the abalone. When it arrived in the mail he realized it was way too thick. He held a grinder between his knees and attempted to grind the brass down to the right thickness, significantly burning his fingers in the process. That guitar it still around, with brass lines flanking its abalone.

At the Galax fiddler's convention shortly after my dad finished that guitar he was able to see a real D-45. He saw George Gruhn walking through the park with it slung over his shoulder and my dad chased him down to look at it. "I thought it was gold around the abalone!" My dad exclaimed. "No, I think that's wo-od." George answered in his signature lilt. Now that he saw one in person, he felt more equipped to make a D-45 of his own.

During a trip to Ray's Hardware in Jefferson, NC my dad discovered a box full of abalone shells. Ray had been trying to sell them for ashtrays, but no one seemed especially interested in them. He sold several to my dad for almost nothing. Daddy then cut the shells into smaller pieces with a hacksaw, then used a file to shape the pieces into flat squares. From there he filed them to the shapes he desired. He then used his pocket knife to whittle the channel for the lines and pearl to fit into the guitar. He glued one set of wooden lines, then glued the pearl in and filed it to fit, then glued the second set of lines. Now we glue everything at once, making space for the pearl with a strip of teflon. He cut his initials out of the extra abalone and whittled a space for it into the headstock veneer. He told me that if you look closely you can see where the pieces are broken because he didn't have a jeweler's saw, or any way to cut the spaces from the middle of a design so everything was cut and pieced together. I looked though, I honestly can't see breaks in that D....

You can more easily see the notches in the abalone of #7.

There's a reason that people flock to Wayne Henderson as being a master at what he does and it has nothing to do with how generous, kind, or patient he is. Those things are just perks. I think what is really incredible is what he was (and still is) able to do with what he has, because for most everyone, there is no way they could figure out how to make a D-45 with completely raw materials and a pocket knife. Especially not one that looks so similar to the factory constructed Martin, and one that sounds, to this day, better than most guitars I have ever heard. No matter how painful or difficult the task, or the number of pieces of abalone I run through the tiny table saw, I will always appreciate that my dad didn't have anyone standing behind him to fix it if he messed up. His experience will always be more difficult than whatever it is I am complaining about. I guess he didn't know it then, but his hard work made it possible for me to realize my day isn't really so bad.

My daddy with his #7 guitar, circa 1967.

No Dancing, Pt. 2

The dilapidated barn next door to my dad's house slumps into the earth, the ground in front of it scarred deep by tire tracks of semi trucks and littered with the limp carcasses of Douglas fir trees. The paint hanging from its walls is dingy and chipped, the silo is rusted, and it is used for nothing. Occasionally it houses insecticide to deter pests from interfering in the growth of the rows and rows of Christmas trees planted within the surrounding fields. I remember when it wasn't like that.

When my dad first moved into this house, Kate Tucker's house, I marveled at the proud white barn accented with red trim that had once accompanied this farmhouse. The large barn was used to milk dairy cows, its rows of gleaming stanchions spanning the length of the vast cement floor. At that time in my life, everything looked like a gymnastics apparatus, holding potential in each curve and crook to flip and tumble upon. I don't remember much from Jurassic Park 2, but I do remember a young girl lithely knocking out a bloodthirsty dinosaur by flipping around a pole hanging from the roof of a barn. "Don't you mess with any of that stuff, it is for cows," my dad would always warn after I implored him to explore the old barn with me. So, the dairy cow harness gymnastics stayed safely in my imagination and no bones or equipment was ever broken. Walking up the creaky stairs in the corner, I found myself standing in a hay loft, the chestnut floor still littered with golden straw. The huge square window once used for transferring hay to and from the ground now simply stood open, allowing the warm summer breeze to waft through.

Kate Tucker, the original owner of my dad's house and that barn, might have been the coolest lady who ever lived in Rugby. She and her husband Breece built this house in 1939 and lived here tending their dairy farm until their deaths. They were well respected and probably the wealthiest folks in the county. They worked hard, they were involved in the community, helping their neighbors when they could, and would often donate a significant portion of their money. In a time when women's roles were strictly defined, Kate defied those roles. She almost always wore pants when such a thing was almost unheard of in Rugby, she served as the postmaster for the Rugby post office for a time, and joined her husband in running their dairy farm.

But one day Kate Tucker messed up. She and her husband did not attended church services weekly as most everyone else in Rugby did. They went occasionally though, which seemed to appease most of the community members who took such things very seriously. (Probably everybody except the moonshiners.) While welcoming them when they attended, the church on the corner cast a skeptical eye towards the Tuckers, perhaps expecting they would only sporadically adhere to other church practices as well. A while back I told you that the Rugby Rescue Squad doesn't allow dancing during their gatherings and benefits and the reason is that some church leaders believe dancing is an expression of evil and leads to evil acts. Well, Kate Tucker did not heed that warning.

In that hay loft of the big and bright barn, Kate decided to have a party. She invited her friends who could play music to bring their instruments, and invited anyone who wanted to join her to come. Friends flocked from near and far, kind of along the lines of a Wayne Henderson patented post-festival party. And everyone danced. They danced into the wee hours of the evening.

When the church caught wind that Kate had hosted a barn dance, she was excommunicated from their services. Just for dancing.

Here's the part of the story where suppressing acts of love, kindness and happiness doesn't win in the end. Kate never mentioned it, but she also didn't forget how the church on the corner excluded her for holding a barn dance. Because she had no children, when she passed away, everyone in the community was interested to see where her wealth would be distributed. She bequeathed $300,000 each to three local churches, and only $10,000 to her ex church, specifically to keep up the cemetery in which she was laid next to her husband. Here's another reason I think we would have gotten along: she also loved her three large dogs enough to leave $10,000 to their continued care following her death.

I have quite a few more stories about Kate which I look forward to sharing with you. I used to worry that she haunted this old house, and when my dad would go out to his shop, when it was in a little building about a mile away, I would cower in my room, listening for sounds of a ghost. Now when I am alone here in this house, I am proud to imagine that she is here with me, watching over her house and reminding me to be a strong woman. That it is important to stand up for my beliefs, even if they might not be shared by everyone around me. Be kind, inclusive, and supportive of others.

In closing to this post, I want to apologize (as usual) for the lag time in my posts. If you read this and want to read more, please let me know that! I never know if anyone actually reads what I write so I tend to focus on other tasks (like guitar building) that I am more consistently reminded need my attention. Also, do you enjoy these old stories or would you prefer to know more about the my daily tasks as a luthier? In any event, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work. I hope you had the most amazing holiday season and wish all of you the very best for 2016!

Thankful

There are so many things in my life for which I am incredibly thankful. One of those things is that my dad has bestowed upon me the knowledge and ability to make beautiful hand crafted guitars that people want so badly they are willing to wait several years for me to make them one. I can't believe that is the case, and because of that each instrument is as unique of each person ordering one. My most recent projects were no different, however, there was a bit of a setback that required me to remember how thankful I am for my dad. Even though he caused it.

A week or so ago I finished two guitars, both 000-18s, in record time. I worked on my own, made no mistakes I had to go back and fix, and didn't feel the need to ask my dad for help or review after completing difficult elements.  Not even when fitting the dovetail joint on the neck into the guitar body which is usually a challenge for me as there is no cheating that angle, no option of covering it with an artistic flourish. All in all, the guitars took 14 days, though had my dad not 'helped' they likely would have taken 12 days.

Seven coats of finish had been sprayed on each guitar body and each neck, everything had been buffed out and sported a glossy sheen. All that left to be done before stringing the guitar was frets, which in hindsight, I should have pressed into the fingerboards before I started the finishing process. The reason I didn't was because I wanted to be sure the fingerboard was at the perfect angle after all was said and done so I waited until I was ready to glue in the neck.

My dad and I work on different schedules. I get out to the shop and start working by about 7:30 am, and work until 6 or 7 in the evening. My dad comes in around noon, and works until 3 am. I walked into the shop that morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to get on the task of fretting the fingerboard. If I finished that by noon, I knew would likely get these two guitars strung up that evening. I walked over to the table where I had left the necks the night before and stood staring at the table for a few minutes. Have you ever had that feeling where you know what you are supposed to be seeing, but the view just doesn't measure up? Like the first time you see a picture of a Platypus. Something's not quite right. Sitting on the granite table was my shiny neck, cut lengthwise down the entire neck, my peghead veneer clamped to an unfinished neck blank.

Sometimes I think of my dad like Santa because occasionally, when I am having a particularly tough time with something, I will give up for the night and go to bed. When I head back out to the shop in the morning the element that had caused me stress will be sitting there finished. This is what I assumed had happened the night before, only this time I was surprised with coal instead of a present. There was a note. It read, "Sorry about your neck. I was trying to be helpful and put in your frets. The fret squeezer pushed into the truss rod [groove]." I read through it a couple of times while I processed this information and though it made me sad that I had a pretty serious setback on my hands, I was mainly concerned that my dad probably felt really bad about breaking my neck. I knew it had to have been my fault if the groove cracked inward like that. After digging the truss rod out of the old neck it turns out the groove was deeper than where the rod sat which surely caused the neck to crack when pressure from the fret squeezer was applied. Sometimes weird things just happen. One thing I have learned from my dad is that there is not much use to get mad, just start a new one. We had a new neck made in record time and I only ended up losing a day or so anyway. The two guitars turned out sounding clean and bright and looked beautiful. It always warms my heart to see my clients love what I make for them and these two guitars did not disappoint.

Vintage lettering like my dad's #52.

White oak back and sides, Carpathian spruce top

Me and Jim

Me and Emory

Finally, I want to take a little side bar and share how thankful I am for all of the teachers I have had in my life. Well, most anyway. The best part is that they have done so much more than teach me their respective subjects, they have taught me lessons of life in general and, indirectly, how to successfully operate a small business. I remember thinking in math class in high school, as I sat in those small salmon colored desks with the table attached for right handed people thinking, "I am never going to need this information right here, let's get to art class." But every time I fit a neck, cut fret grooves, or glue and shave braces I think of my high school math teachers Laura Roarke and Beth Derringer. They championed for me to succeed in math even though I despised most of it and for their unwavering encouragement I am so thankful. I guess my point with this last thought is that while you might not be able to see it while you're in it, be thankful for the people who teach you things, even if they break your guitar neck and make you start over. There's always a positive lesson in there somewhere.

No Dancing, Pt 1

Do you like to dance? I do, sometimes. Every now and again the mood strikes me and I just gotta dance. The right song pops up on my ipod when I am alone in the shop and after I secure the piece of binding I am currently gluing to a guitar body I will go to town, simply enjoying the music and expressing my happiness. Happiness that I am here, doing a job I love, and that I am getting to make something neat that someone will cherish when it is finished. Then my dad walks in and I pretend I was just taking an innocent walk around the workbench I never use...Where was that tape we use for holding binding as it dries? I thought I had seen a new roll sitting on this corner over here...

When I was young, I read everything. Anything I could see that had a word on it was fair game. I would sound the words out in my head and proudly announce them to anyone near enough to listen. One of the first signs I distinctly recall reading was hanging in the Rugby Rescue Squad building. When the community would have a gathering, they would drive all of the emergency vehicles out of their garage bays and set up rows of tables in their place. The ladies cooked all day and brought trays of food: chicken and dumplings, barbecued pork, bowls piled with green beans and collard greens plucked from their gardens that morning and simmered in pork fat all day. Banana pudding, strawberry layer cakes, peach pies with flaky buttery crusts. A murphy bed style stage covered in brown astroturf-type carpeting was pulled down and microphones set upon it. My dad and other local musicians played music during the festivities. Hanging just to the right of the stage was a handwritten sign, always hanging slightly askew, that proclaimed "No Dancing". 

I remember asking my dad why no one was permitted to dance along with the music, as I was pretty much an expert flat-footer at the age of 6 and couldn't wait to show off my amazing moves. Most especially the one I had just learned where I would bend my knee and hold my foot out behind me and frantically twirl it in a circle in hopes the rotations were in time to the beat. When you're six years old and dancing in front of a crowd of adults, that's the money move right there. After some research, YouTube has just informed me that the move is called the Haywheeler. I have attached a simplified version I found if you want to practice it yourself. Make sure to move knee-height valuables and check the whereabouts of your kids and pets first. 

My dad told me that dancing wasn't allowed because the local religious leaders said dancing was a sin and that it was an expression of the devil. I remember thinking that seemed a bit farfetched to me as I enjoyed dancing to express happiness and it didn't seem to hurt anyone, but I was petrified to upset anyone or get in trouble, so abided by the rule. I found subtle ways to dance around the injunction a bit though (see what I did there?), bouncing on the seat of my aluminum folding chair while my dad played his guitar from the stage, and always adding extra pep to my steps as I circled around the cake walk. 

I feel like the Dixie Chicks said it best, because Some days you gotta dance/Live it up when you get the chance/'Cause when the world doesn't make no sense/And you're feeling just a little too tense/Gotta loosen up those chains and dance!

Next time I will tell you about how a prominent member of the community, Kate Tucker, defied the No Dancing rule, and got the last laugh. 

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

I have sort of an odd confession: I really, really like tin foil. I don't use it that often because I read somewhere that using aluminum with food products can give you Alzheimers, but on those occasions I feel it is necessary, I excitedly pull out the box. I always try to keep the sheet as smooth as possible when pulling it from the roll. I carefully slice it along the box's serrated edge, ideally without snagging the sheet and causing a wrinkle. I think there is something incredibly clean and fresh about a newly unrolled piece of tin foil that I simply can't get over. Maybe though, my love for new tin foil stems from memories of my youth. Staying with Granny, I was rarely allowed to pull a fresh length of foil from the roll and rather I was asked to take the crumpled piece waiting primly on the oak buffet to be reused.

My Granny saved everything for reuse. And, really, I mean everything. Aluminum can tops, wrapping paper, pickle jars, and the pickle juice...and always tin foil. I remember trying to press the wrinkles out of the foil with my fingers, and after what felt like hours of work, it still never flattened to the consistency of that fresh piece. She would also cut up my dad's glue stained jeans and make pot holders from them, make shirts from cloth feed bags, and quilts from old shirts and threadbare pillowcases.

While I begrudged reusing such products, especially the tin foil, I am thankful to Granny for showing me to better appreciate the seemingly insignificant items we apathetically consume each day. Actions such as hers help in turn to reduce waste which I have now learned, after paying a lot of money for an environmental law and policy degree, is exceptionally important to the health of our environment. I am also thankful that her example has taught me that just because we may have a new roll of tin foil, it is not necessary to use it if you have a perfectly good piece that still does the job.


The other day someone brought me a Red spruce top that was too small for large body guitars, and after sanding it down, I saw that its color wasn't perfectly uniform across the surface. Some folks might see these characteristics as flaws, but I don't. This top is special in its own right, and because a three hundred year old tree was cut to produce this set of wood, I feel that it deserves to be appreciated and used. The grain within the wood is tight and the board is stiff, which my dad taught me are ideal characteristics for a top that will produce great sound.

I decided that a perfect use for this set of top wood would be for a Nick Lucas guitar because its significant sunburst will cover the color differences on the edges of the top. I have paired the top with an incredibly flamed set of maple back and sides, who's curl will be amplified by the stain that will be sprayed on it. I can't wait to finish this instrument, and just wanted to tell you how special the wood in it is to me. I like to think my Granny would be proud that I appreciate and use every set of wood I have and am able to see potential and beauty in something that perhaps not everyone would.

Don't overlook something just because it isn't perfect. Sometimes you can still make something amazing with it.

Granny's Garden

As summer is winding down here in the North Carolina mountains I can't help but think of the vast harvest of my Granny's garden. When I was young, as my dad pulled the car down into her drive, I would typically see my Granny bent over, tending to a vine filled with vegetables. That memory brings the nostalgia flooding in. Picking late summer tomatoes, finding the perfect squash, and pulling the dry husk from a cob crowded with golden corn kernels is only a snippet of what I remember from those times spent in the patch of tilled earth lining the long drive in front of her house.

I wish I had appreciated it more then, and had known better than take it for granted, but Granny worked for all of the food she provided for me. When I requested a snack at her house I wasn't offered a shiny, crinkly bag of chips as I would have preferred, but instead I ate crisp leaves of lettuce resting in a bit of vinegar, bumpy cucumbers sliced into spears that she sprinkled with salt, and juicy tomatoes to accompany buttery biscuits. I would give almost anything to be able to sit on the porch right now with a plate of salted cucumbers and look up to see my Granny in her garden.

Granny Ollie

My dad told me a story once about Granny Ollie (Granny's mom) in her garden. He said she had patience that most everyone else lacked and was able to keep moles out of her garden when most neighbors were not able to do so. Catching moles digging in the garden is a feat as if you walk within ten feet of them they will feel the vibrations of the ground and will immediately stop digging and will hide. No mole was going to outsmart Granny Ollie though. She would stand out in the garden and wait until one dug nearby. Once she used this practice in my Granny's garden. She was likely in her seventies, perhaps even early eighties, at the time she came to help with the moles but she still stood as motionless as ever, with the Henderson family's 16 gauge single barrel shotgun poised for action. After standing silently for several hours, BANG! off went the shotgun, shooting a cloud of dust about ten feet high, completely engulfing Granny Ollie. When the dust cleared, there was a foot wide hole in the soil directly between her feet that contained what was left of the mole. She gathered the pieces to show the other moles they had better watch out. Sometimes I don't understand my family, as it seems their main concern is eliminating the pest rather than considering they might hit something important. Like that time my dad saw a mouse jump into the grill of his car and his reaction was to shoot at his car with ratshot. "I got him though!" was his response when I asked him to repeat the part where he shot a gun toward his own car.

If I had to guess, my dad's three favorite things to eat are watermelon, biscuits and gravy, and a ripe tomato minutes from being picked from the vine. When he was growing up he said his favorite time was late summer when the tomatoes were still abundant and the pumpkins were ready for picking. Granny would roast the pumpkin, scoop out the inside, and whip it to the consistency of mashed potatoes. She would serve the pumpkin with freshly baked biscuits and sliced tomatoes. My dad said that was one of his favorite meals. Growing up I don't recall there being a day in summer and early fall when a bowl of sliced tomatoes didn't rest in the center of the round oak dinner table, covered with a scrap of cloth between mealtimes.

It isn't just the memories of delicious food from Granny's garden that I am thankful for. Through that garden I was taught to appreciate the importance of where my food comes from and the hard work that is put behind cultivating it. Granny would hand me a bunch green beans and I would sit on the porch swing snapping the ends from each bean and dropping them into a bowl of cool water to be boiled for Sunday dinner. She taught me to pull the dry husks from golden cobs of corn, taking extra care to remove all the silk from between the kernels. I learned to step carefully over seedlings and that spreading ash from the wood stove over potatoes would keep bugs from eating them. I like to think because I was shown that there is such work behind our food, spending an hour making my own pasta or making pie crust for a lattice pie is invigorating rather than something too time consuming to try. And cutting a tedious design from pieces of pearl will yield far more satisfaction when I am finished than the difficulty it took to cut it.

Alaska

The things I have to do for work. Last week I used the excuse that I had two ukulele orders from folks who lived in Alaska to fly up and visit one of my all time favorite places. Of course I needed a helper to carry on one of the ukuleles so I enlisted my husband Nick to fill that job. We drove to Charlotte, reluctantly subjected my beloved instruments to the x-ray machine and TSA scrutiny, stuffed them into the overhead bin and were off to Alaska.

Not super happy about the rain.

Our first stop was Juneau, the great town in which I had worked and lived for two summers during undergrad. First as a kayak guide, then for a glacier guiding company. The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start (foresight pun, get ready), as while Nick and I were hiking along the west edge of the Mendenhall Glacier to check out the amazing ice caves, I slipped on the steep, rain soaked bedrock (see what I did there?) and somehow managed to rip a nickel sized hole in my palm and several small but deep cuts in my pinky finger. We chose to walk the two miles back to the car since I didn't have anything besides my other hand to hold my new bloody skin flap shut and I knew the hike would become more dangerous and steep as we advanced toward the edge of the glacier. I hiked out feeling sad and dejected. Seeing the incredibly blue ice caves was one of the most awesome and rewarding things I did while I was living in Juneau.

We had high hopes for a more exciting and fun second day, but the rain was relentless, and continued throughout our stay. That second morning Nick wanted to go for a run, so I took him to a flat marshy trail by the airport that runs along the float plane runway (a little lake type thing with docks placed every few feet) then opens into marshland along the Mendenhall river, where the runoff from the glacier makes its way to the ocean. I decided I wasn't in the mood to run, so I meandered down a smaller trail that wound to a point out by the river. The salmon were spawning and it is always exciting, and a bit sad, to watch them fighting their way up the stream. This time of year salmon carcasses line the shore and make for a serious stench.

In the distance toward the water I saw what I thought to be a person in a large coat (I didn't have my glasses on) scanning the marshy grassland, then bending down as if to clip a dog to a leash or something, then standing up and looking around again as if they were a lighthouse having to shed light across the entire area. As I walked along my little path I noticed the person kept doing this, and, while a little confused I didn't pay them much mind. I figured I would see what they were doing as my path lead back up to the larger trail. It looked as though it would intersect with theirs in a hundred feet or so. I then realized that it wasn't a person doing toe-touches in the middle of the marsh, but rather it was a black bear searching for salmon to eat. Eff. I didn't want to continue along my little path since it took me right by the bear, so I turned and swiftly walked (calmly, kind of) through the grass toward the closet spot on the big trail where more folks were exercising. The problem with this plan, I quickly discovered, was that the ground was getting mushier and the grass was getting higher and higher. At first the fronds brushed my waist, and many were knocked down no doubt by bears walking through, but now the grass stood as high as my chest, with my XtraTuf boots splashing through foot-deep puddles, the bottom of which I couldn't see. I thought, which is worse: hanging out by a bear or getting stuck in some kind of Alaskan quicksand in grass so deep no one could see me as I was consumed by the bushes? I managed to power through my panic and scrambled up the bank, trying to calm my racing heartbeat. A fresh blister rubbed into the back of my heel because I hadn't packed enough tall socks, I decided it was time to go sit in the car to wait there for Nick to finish his run.

The third day in Juneau I was able to deliver my Brazilian rosewood ukulele with Alaskan star inlay to its owner. While still impeded by a day of heavy rain, I didn't hurt myself or offend any wildlife so I considered it a good day. Joel met us at Northstar Trekking, the glacier guiding company I used to work for and for whom he is now in charge of helicopter safety. It was neat to show Nick where I worked, and hang out with some of the folks I knew from seven years ago. One bittersweet thing in particular. Mike, one of the helicopter mechanics that I remembered from my time at Northstar was working in the hangar and his awesome dog Pilot sat overseeing the mechanic work. After hanging out with Pilot a while, I was struck by a memory. On one of my last days working that summer, Mike got a new puppy and brought him in to work a couple of those days. I remember playing with him every time I saw his adorable face and even took a picture one day before getting back to work. So now I have that picture along with this one I took with 7 year old Pilot.

Aside from the nostalgia, I am also grateful that I got to know Joel a bit, as he is kind of a badass and even more importantly, just a really great guy. He has an infectious positive energy and obvious love for his job which always makes me happy to see. He let us check out the Northstar helicopters, sharing bits of behind the scenes information, letting us in on some fancy lingo, and eagerly snapping pictures of us pretending to be pilots.

Being that Joel is a helicopter pilot, and an awesome guy, he flew down to help fight the fires currently raging in Idaho. Given the dangerous circumstances of such an endeavor that worries me but I so admire his dedication to his job and appreciate his service. His ukulele, which he named Aurora (couldn't have picked a better one myself), made the trip with him, hopefully providing a little bit of stress relief and happiness to these busy days.

As I have said many times, watching someone open the case and see the instrument I have made for them is one of my all time favorite parts of the job and this time was a great one. It makes my heart swell to see that I have made someone happy with my work, and that their expectations have been exceeded in ways they didn't realize they could be. Now, I know this won't always be the case, but on those times when it is, I want to reiterate how truly honored I am to have been able to play a tiny part in my client's lives.

On our final day in Juneau the clouds eventually gave up and parted enough for us to get to go for a helicopter ride and glacier trek on the Mendenhall. I was so excited to be able to get that close range view I had planned for our first day. Finally, Nick could see why I love this place so much; the majesty of the mountains, the intensity of the landscape, the unparalleled beauty of a glacier ice.

After downing our last two Alaskan Ambers since we didn't have any room in our checked bag, we hopped on a plane heading for Anchorage to deliver the second ukulele. My friend Randy met us at the airport and took us straight to a pizza and beer establishment called Moose's Tooth. He knows me pretty well I guess. I have known Randy just about as many years as I have been alive, and I remember being baffled when he up and moved to Alaska after living in North Carolina his whole life. Turns out his wife Rebecca, whom he had recently married, had worked in Anchorage previously and had just been offered her old job so off they went. I am so glad Randy found such a great partner. While we hung out at their house, my favorite thing was watching how well they complemented each other. They are so supportive of one another's interests and it just makes me glad to know Randy is truly happy living in the Great White North.

Photo courtesy Randy Pasley

The ukulele I made for Rebecca mirrors the guitar my dad made for her some years ago, and both have an eight point star quilt square on the peghead. I think it is fitting that the star symbolizes deep family bonds for Rebecca. It was a great honor for me to see how the ukulele I built would fit into their family. To me instruments are just as important as living beings, providing their versions of happiness and love just as their dog Ola Belle does for them, or my dog Harper does for me. Rebecca and Randy both took turns playing the new uke, plucking their individual styles out on the strings. I even strummed along with Randy's rendition of Freight Train. (As we all know, that's my jams)



The next morning while our hosts headed to work, Nick and I decided to explore the nearby town of Whittier, Alaska. Because we misjudged the amount of time it would take for us to drive through the timed single-lane tunnel to Whittier, through which the train also passed, we ended up just making it to Portage pass. We hiked to the Portage glacier since we missed out on hiking to the Mendenhall while in Juneau. The weather turned out to be incredible, warm and sunny, and the hike was one of the more beautiful things I have seen.

All in all it was an incredible trip. While I left Alaska minus two ukuleles and several layers of skin in multiple spots on my body, I gained so much more. With us on our trip home, we brought tons of pictures, new friendships, the coolest pair of hand-knitted socks you could ever imagine, 35 pounds of salmon, 24 Alaskan beers, 4 tasting glasses, a glow in the dark pint glass, and exceptional, lasting memories.

Patience

Pretty much every day I am thankful that I get to make things and people like those things enough to buy them so I can pay for things. It doesn't feel like a job really, just a super fun way to pass the time. Then there are those rare days when everything goes wrong I would rather pull my teeth out with the fret nippers that try to right those wrongs. Times like, when I spray seven coats of finish on a ukulele then somehow manage to knock a little hole down to the wood in the side of the neck. Superglue and respray time. Or when I take extra precautions to make sure there is enough room for the bushings that surround the tuners because I know the pressure can crack the finish on the headstock, only to watch a crack begin to run slowly but surely down the peghead. Respray, resand, rebuff time! Then to have the exact thing happen again (on multiple tuners) even though I had taken even more precautions after taking the time to repair the little cracks. Where are those fret nippers.

The most important lesson my dad has taught me in my luthier journey is to be patient. There is no such thing as perfection, but keep working and redoing things until it is as close as it can be. Mistakes happen, and things don't always go how you expect them to on the first try and that is ok, just fix it. No one exercises such patience like Wayne Henderson though. While I try to emulate his calm, 'we will just fix it' attitude when things like this happen, I tend to fall a bit short, at least for a few minutes before I collect myself and make a new plan. I am a type A planner, you see, and when my plans break and my contingencies have been exhausted as well, I tend to freak out, or at any rate, have to take an extra beta blocker. 

This week has tried my patience time and again but I am quite proud to say that I only took several minutes to decide on a new plan and dealt with each situation as it came, mostly because I had no other choice. My dad has been teaching a guitar class this week and hasn't been working in the shop so I have had to fix my own problems without the 'we will fix it' safety net usually set in place for me. The reason I had such and unusually tight schedule is because these particular instruments are heading to their new homes in Juneau and Anchorage, Alaska. I typically set a tentative timeline for finishing instruments once I begin them, but in this case the timeline was set by Alaska Airlines so things had to be completed on a certain date. 

If you don't know this about me, Juneau, Alaska is just about my very favorite place on this planet. (Maybe only slightly second to Haw Orchard Mountain in Grayson Highlands State Park.) One summer in undergrad, as part of my Outdoor Leadership minor I was working toward at NC State, I decided to apply for a plethora of outdoor jobs sprinkled all over the country and was then hired by a kayak guiding company based in Juneau. That summer and the summer following when I returned to work for a glacier guiding company were truly the best I have ever had. I grew as a person, learned my limits, and met some of the best people I could imagine. I am so excited to head back there next week and show Nick where I used to work and play. The time couldn't come any quicker though, now that my ukuleles are (finally) ready to go to their new homes. Hm, maybe my dad's rule of practicing patience will prove to be helpful in many aspects of life.

Stars of the Alaska flag on 12th fret

A year and a half or so ago I received a request for a ukulele from a fellow who's signature included at the bottom of his message said he was from Alaska. That piqued my interes for obvious reasons, and it turns out he is in charge of the helicopter safety for the very well respected glacier guiding company I used to work for. We missed each other by several years so he had no idea my connection to Juneau when he randomly came upon my work via my website. That is one of my favorite parts of my job, I never know when I will meet someone incredible, or have an opportunity to make something for someone with a shared interest. A few weeks ago I finally I set about making a ukulele that paid tribute to our mutual love of southeast Alaska. The time has finally come that I am able to deliver it, so Nick and I are flying up a week from today to do just that. Hopefully we will get to take a little walk on the Mendenhall glacier while we are at it. 


For good measure, I made another ukulele for some old friends whom I have known just about my whole life, but now live in Anchorage. I figure Nick and I might as well visit there while we are at it. I made a copy of my friend's OM-18 that my dad made for her several years ago, complete with the eight point quilt square on the headstock. I worked a trade on this ukulele, as I have been paid in fresh caught Alaskan salmon and halibut for the past couple of years. While this ukulele sounds great, I think perhaps I have come out on the winning end of that deal. 

Before you go, I want to share a little something with you. Below is an excerpt from an email I sent to my friends and family the week in May that I began working in Juneau that first summer. I was searching my email for 'Alaska Air' to send my itinerary to some friends, and this one popped up as a potential match for my search. While it has nothing to do with guitars or ukuleles, I hope you enjoy a little snippet of my time there, so you can more fully appreciate my excitement upon returning to the great white north next week. 

I started my job on Friday. The weather was chilly but not too cloudy. I had about 5 minutes to learn how to drive a trailer and be a tour guide. Saturday was my fist official day of work.That day I shadowed a seasoned guide leading a group then she had me lead the second group. The cove we paddle to amazingly beautiful, with a fantastic view of the Menedenhall Glacier in the distance. The water is definitely freezing since it is primarily runoff from the glacier, but the sun really warms up the air. 

As I lead my first group of tourists across the water, I attempted to rattle off some Alaska trivia. Unfortunately the only information I have retained so far are the strange random bits since I had about the time one spends picking out paper towels at the grocery store to learn the tidbits from a sheet of paper the company provided. So, now these people are aware that the whole of Alaska can hold 420 Rhode Islands...And Douglas Island (the smaller island running parallel to Juneau proper that we set off from each day) is named after the Bishop of Salisbury. 

Kayak guiding

I have met some interesting people so far.  The hairdresser of the US Olympic synchronized swimming team called one of her swimmers and handed me the phone, positive I would enjoy speaking to an Olympian (though the swimmer and I were equally confused but it was fun). Another rather ornery older man was removing his spray skirt and his trousers accompanied it. I am fairly certain I did not get a tip from him. I did however get a generous tip likely due to pity from the folks who watched as my $150 sunglasses tumbled down my back and into the 37 degree water, so that is good. Note to self: purchase floaty things for sunglasses with tip money. 

Yesterday the esteemed raft guides were not available to drive the chase boat, an unnecessary piece of equipment that is mostly there for the client's peace of mind, so I had to do that. Driving a motorboat around was a new experience. I learn I don't enjoy boats with motors very much. The Life of Pi, the book I had borrowed from the library downtown and what was enjoying while waiting for someone to overturn so I could race the chase boat gallantly over to them and pluck them from the water, dropped into the unpleasant mixture of gasoline and water that permanently sloshes in a vestibule next to the steering column of this ghastly vehicle. I am quite sure the library will not accept a book returned sopping with gasoline, therefore I will have to purchase it but won't be able to finish it without getting high on fumes. I have decided that, while more labor intensive, kayaking is significantly more enjoyable to chase boating.

Anyway, all little blips aside I am enjoying the new adventure here in Juneau. The weather has been amazing so far-it is beautiful and sunny at the moment. I hope it stays like this for a while but I won't get too comfy just in case it takes a turn for the rainy and cold. Perhaps then I will find a more pressing need for the rubber boots I was ordered to purchase immediately upon touching down in Juneau. Looking forward to more excitement as my adventure here continues!

Fritz Cove, my office as a kayak guide. We would paddle from the beach one the left of the picture to the islands and river on the ride side of the picture. The river is murky colored because it is 37 degree glacier runoff which is filled with silt.

Ice caves at the Mendenhall glacier. Representing a Henderson Festival shirt. And my sunglasses that toppled overboard...

The Giant Firecracker

Under a quickly fading clouded sky, Nick and I filed up a thin dirt path, winding through a field completely alight with fireflies. We decided on a whim, after an afternoon of fun snacks and great company, that we wanted to further celebrate our Independence Day by seeing the best fireworks display in the area. We figured there was no better spot to do such a thing than from the south terrace of the Biltmore Estate. From there it is possible to take in incredible mountain views for miles, with downtown Asheville in the foreground. We ascended to the house along a section of one of my favorite running trails and walked up the large stone steps separating the house from the Italian garden. From our perch on the huge stone terrace we saw colorful bursts of sparks beginning to fill the sky. Still, as we watched a magnificent show from the most beautiful spot I could imagine, I found myself wondering what we would be experiencing had Nick and I had decided to drive up to Rugby and take in the show my dad and our neighbor Andy had concocted. If only just to be sure they didn't blow themselves (or anything else) up in the process.

Nick waits for the fireworks to start at the Biltmore Estate

See, when my dad was a young boy growing up surrounded by mountains and farmland, guitars weren't his only area of interest. He would use his pocket knife to whittle his own toys and his imagination to improve on the occasional store bought toy. One particular instance was when he acquired a pack of fire crackers. You know the ones, they come in a big red pack all strung together and Kevin McAllister threw a bunch in a bucket to scare Marv away from his kitchen door.

My dad figured if he could see how those fire crackers were constructed he could make a large explosive device that would be bigger and better than the generic store bought ones. He carefully opened the red tissue and removed the powder from within several firecrackers. He then wrapped the powder together into one mass as large as a grown man's index finger. Unfortunately, after about twenty attempts, none of his homemade mini-bombs made more than a fizzling noise. He speculated that the wrapping was not as tight as the original packaging had been, and worked to improve his design. He stuck with his project late into the night. He and my uncle Max were the only people still awake in the house; Granny and my grandfather Walter had retired to their room upstairs hours earlier.

"That is never going to work." Max exclaimed. My dad persisted, unruffled. He wrapped the paper tighter than he had on the others and admired his handiwork. Max, expecting the same fizzle to occur, took the giant firecracker from my dad's hands and nonchalantly lit it with the butt of his cigarette.  He threw it into the coal bucket that sat next to the tall thin stove on which Granny used to heat water in a heavy cast iron kettle. I remember that stove and bucket well. I would marvel at the black chunks of coal stacked in it, just waiting to be fed into the mouth of the stove, its coiled handle dangling like a nose off the front.

BANG! The firecracker went off that time. "You never heard such a noise!" my dad told me. "Whats going on down there?" My grandfather drawled, still half asleep. My dad said he blamed it on Max, answering, "Oh nothing. Max lit my firecracker and threw it in the floor." I asked what the consequences had been for such antics and my dad told me that they didn't even come downstairs. "I guess they were used to my shenanigans, I was always doing crazy things like that." (Remember when I wrote about the time he sat in the rafters of the barn to ensnare chickens as they strutted by or when he hid a metal sign under a thin layer of snow and watched the dogs (and my Granny) slip on it?)

I am glad the fireworks display Wayne and Andy put on last night in downtown Rugby turned out to be simply a good show; nothing that would require my grandfather to get out of bed for. The horses next door, however, might have decided to leave town. I hope you all had a safe and happy 4th of July full of family, friends, good food, and safe fireworks.

Spring Updates

Springtime!

Spring has officially sprung in the Appalachian mountains, and I have thrown from my shoulders what feels like a heavy blanket of weariness, thickening as the cold winter months wore on. Harper and I have been thoroughly enjoying our runs again. Everything looks new and fresh. I always take a little time to marvel in appreciation at the saturation of colors now donning the landscape around me; how green the grass is, how beautiful and alive the mountains are again. Having been so busy with all of the marveling, I want to apologize for the lack of posts. Over the past few weeks I finished four instruments, made a trip to Nashville, and then rewarded myself (and Nick and Harper) by taking a quick but relaxing trip to the beach. New spring energy is just my favorite!

The coolest thing about my job I think is the fact that with each instrument I make, I also have the opportunity to meet an awesome person to go with it. These past four instruments have included with them some amazing folks. I like to think that with each build, I lose and instrument but gain a friend. This batch was no exception. EmiSunshine and her awesome parents came to pick up her ukulele. When someone comes to get an instrument from me or my dad I think the instrument is the smallest part. I like the experience of getting to know someone and showing them around in my life a little bit. I think that is why I hate shipping guitars so much, not necessarily due to the potential for damage to the instrument, but more due to missing out on that connection with my clients. Instead of just coming to get her uke and leaving, Emi, her parents, my dad and I ended up taking a drive up to the park, visiting the wild ponies, and taking rides around the block in my dad's old Thunderbird. It was a nice visit, and so fun to get to know them a bit better. More about that in a minute.

Next, a customer, Tim, drove with his wife Mary and dog Theo up to Rugby from Raleigh to pick up his walnut 000. My favorite part of making instruments is when I get to see someone's reaction when they open the case. (Check out the video of Emi's on her facebook page) With the exception of Emi, it is usually quiet, but being able to feel the excitement and happiness radiating from the person just makes me happier than I am able to describe. Tim's reaction was no exception and I had no doubt this guitar would be heading to a good home. We had a lovely afternoon sitting on the porch enjoying some wine and cheese while Harper and Theo lounged under the cherry tree.

I also enjoy that people want to give me things from their lives aside from money for the instrument I made them. Tim brought me a new knife, a beautiful Case with blades of damascus steel-a knife my dad is pretty jealous of, which is kind of awesome. (He hasn't had much to say about my favorite pink polka dotted Case knife, though I have caught him using it a few times.) Tim also brought me a turkey call he made, which is so neat. I had told him that turkeys live up on my mountain in Asheville and he thought I might want to try to make friends with them. He was right, as I had been scratching a knife across a plate to try to talk to the turkey roosting in a tree about eye level from our deck. Nick stood watching, probably questioning his decision to marry me. Now that I have my turkey call, I can retire the plate. The other day a big Tom was strutting around the yard nearby so I ran inside and grabbed my turkey call and ran back out to call to him. He puffed up at my answering screech a couple of times but didn't seem overly interested in me. I also am not sure if I should find it endearing or concerning that none of my neighbors thought it odd that I was skulking around stalking turkeys...

Several weeks ago, Nick and I drove to Nashville so we could watch EmiSunshine play the ukulele I made her at the Grand Ole Opry. Of course, while that was my official excuse for going, I made sure to stop at my favorite restaurant, Silo, and as usual it did not disappoint. Go if you are in the area, they make some great farm to table deliciousness. What also didn't disappoint was the Opry visit. I felt fancy since I knew the first person we encountered backstage. It was George Gruhn walking down the hall.  I got to have a nice visit waiting for Emi to go on, George, Nick, and I sat in an empty dressing room and talked about business and guitars for a while. We then visited with Emi and her family before they went on stage.

One thing I'd like to address is what I see when I am around Emi and her band, which is also her family, most by blood. I have noticed that some folks have suggested via her facebook page that she is a 'cash cow' for her family, and I have also been asked several times if her situation is along the lines of a pageant child. Now, I know that I am no one of consequence, but from what I know of this family I want to say with absolute certainty that EmiSunshine absolutely loves what she is doing, and is incredibly talented at it, and that is why she does it. Not only that, but my favorite thing I saw at the Opry was how obvious it was that her parents were there solely to support her and what she loves to do.

I remember noticing it when they first came to my dad's house in the winter and we were all just hanging out. There is such palpable love there that it makes me a little sad knowing that not everyone gets to experience such strong love and support from their parents. Talking to Emi's dad Randall backstage, I told him that I was so glad this is a family affair. He has such a strong connection with his daughter and I am incredibly happy for them because I didn't get that opportunity with my dad when I was little. I think a lot of that shows through at her shows, but I know I am lucky to be able to have such a close view. Even if you don't see it as much from the nosebleed section, you don't have to. It's there.

On our way out of town, Nick and I stopped by Carter Vintage Guitars to see what Christie had hanging on her walls. She showed us some amazing rare Martins and Gibsons before I walked over to peruse the ukuleles hanging in the middle of the main show room. I was so excited to see a 1940s Martin tenor ukulele, that I didn't even notice that one I had built was hanging right next to it. I feel honored that my work was included in her incredible inventory. I am even more proud that it sold a week after it arrived, and went to someone who can't wait to play it and love it as I hope for all of my instruments.

Tomorrow I head back to Rugby for some hard work before my dad's festival on June 20. I am working on #28 guitar and ukulele, a match pair that just happen to have the same serial number. I put the ukulele body together while I was home in Asheville, so hopefully that will give me enough of a head start to be able to finish these up in a few weeks. I hope to see you all there! Along with visiting with yours truly, there will be some absolutely amazing artists playing, EmiSunshine included! If you want more information, visit www.waynehenderson.org.  

Photo Credit: Alisha Hamilton

Dressing room #1

View from backstage

George Gruhn

E.C. Ball

View from the top of Quillen Ridge.

Springtime is one of my favorite seasons, everything looks new and full of hope. The trees are dotted with bright green buds that always bring an image of Bob Ross grinning into his paint palette declaring, "Let's put some happy little leaves on those happy trees!" And when I am in Rugby, spring is my favorite time to run up Quillen Ridge. The first mile and a half of the gravel road, popping out a short ways from the Rugby sign, is a bit of a climb, but after that the harsh grade gives way to rolling hills with peeks of incredible views.  The road winds between the trees, providing glimpses of sparsely habited property.  Harper and I trot past several old houses that were abandoned long ago; one tired tattered house in particular brings thoughts of my heritage, and the incredible folks who have lived in this tiny corner of the world.

My dad talks a lot about E.C. Ball. He was a musician who played guitar in a band called the Rugby Gully Jumpers with my grandfather, sang gospel songs with his wife Orna, drove the school bus, and lived up the holler on Quillen Ridge in Rugby, VA. I never gave him significant thought until I really started to listen to the stories my dad tells.

EC Ball's home today.

The first and most important thing you need to know about E.C. is that he had a 1949 Martin D-28. No one else in the community could afford anything of that caliber and my dad wanted nothing more than to make a guitar just like it so that he could have one too. E.C. was incredibly proud and protective of his guitar and no matter how many times my dad asked, he was never allowed to remove the strings and peek inside to see how it was made. E.C. would sometimes let him play the guitar, only sitting on a box in the middle of the Rugby store, with anything that had the potential to scratch moved away so the guitar had no chance of getting dinged.  He was allowed to play the guitar for a few minutes, and E.C. would only occasionally teach him a new lick. "He was kind of crotchety, and not a very patient teacher, so I learned my own style just like he learned his own style from listening to records of Riley Tuckett of the Skillet Lickers,"  my dad told me.

I asked what E.C.'s job was,  curious if he was just a musician or if he did something else for income as well. My dad told me that he was the bus driver for his high school. My dad never took the bus so he didn't have anything much to add about that aspect of the job, but he said the bus drivers would drive in the mornings then stay near the school all day, walking down the hill to the store to loaf a while, then walking back up the hill to play horse shoes at the school, then driving the kids back home in the afternoon. My dad told me, "I was really good at horseshoes, they would let me play with them sometimes, but I would whoop them." He said the old men took their game of horseshoes very seriously and would never let kids play with them so the fact that my dad was invited to play was a big deal.

Like my dad and I, E.C. also enjoyed working with his hands. The agriculture teacher at the high school was also assigned to be the shop teacher, but he never stepped foot in the shop and never taught the kids anything therefore the shop was left empty most of the time. Of course the exception being for the occasional curious student, one of whom shoved a broom handle into the jointer to see what would happen and now lives without a pointer finger. The local men would dabble in woodworking in the unoccupied shop, and E.C. would be a regular visitor, making small furniture, gun racks (one of which he made for my dad), and little accents to hang on his home. I knew which house was his because of the two diamond shaped decorations adorning each side of the door of his now dilapidated house. While the current state of the house brought some sadness, I felt special that I knew E.C. made those in my dad's high school wood shop.

EC, his fingerboard and my dad's first inlay job.

E.C. was also interested in guitar work. Every time I walk down the hall to the kitchen in my dad's house, I pass a display of EC Ball's fingerboard from that old Martin. (My dad has the rest of the guitar in his collection, but the fingerboard was removed at some point and he was able to get it back from the repair shop where it was taken off.) I have always looked at the display with apathy, but now I appreciate the significance. E.C. redid the inlay on his guitar himself, sanding down mother-of-pearl buttons from his wife's church coat and filing them to the shape of those typically found in prewar 45-style Martins and inlaying them in place of the typical 28-style inlay markers. I also noticed a little ECB inlaid in the space between the 18th and 19th frets. "I did that," my dad told me, "it was a huge deal that he trusted me enough to finally be allowed to take the strings off and inlay that for him."

Since I enjoy inlay work, I like to think of E.C. as a bit of kindred spirit in that respect. He had a preacher friend who saved and saved and eventually was able to buy himself a brand new D-28. He asked E.C. to custom inlay the fingerboard to match the '49 Martin, and E.C. happily accepted. Halfway through the job, he accidentally inlayed one of the large pearl pieces between the wrong two frets. In a panic, E.C. took the guitar to my dad's shop and asked if there was anything to do to fix it; was there anything to fill the hole in the fingerboard that wouldn't be noticed. My dad said, "No, I don't think there is anything in the world that would hide a mistake like that, but leave it here. I will look at it and see if I can get it fixed by tomorrow morning." The fingerboard had binding on it, so my dad simply removed the ebony from between the frets and replaced the whole piece, covering the seams with the binding on the sides and the frets above and below the piece. He then put the inlay in the correct spot. "I've never seen a grouchy old man as happy as he was then," my dad said when E.C. came in and saw the repair job my dad did. He looked at it a while, then asked if my dad wouldn't mind just going ahead and doing the rest of the inlay job. I keep that little anecdote in my back pocket just in case I ever need to do a similar repair.

There's so much more about E.C. and Orna Ball that I haven't touched on and even more that I don't even know, but these are the memories and stories I want to tell.  I'm sure I could scare up a follow-up post in the future. The songs and biography you can probably find online somewhere; acestry.com will tell you that E.C's wife Orna and my Granny were first cousins. The stories I like to know are ones of mundane daily experiences. I love that in this tiny place that is so insignificant in the grand scheme of the world, there have lived so many talented, incredible people to share their immense gifts. I am so proud to be part of and inspired by this community and I don't take one step up Quillen Ridge for granted.

E.C.'s house today, featuring the diamond shaped decorations he made himself.

Detail of E.C.'s home decorations.

Downtown Rugby featuring the old store my dad played E.C.'s Martin.

Check out this video of one of EC's original songs! 

Working From Home

There's a magnetic type of energy that seems to surround my dad's shop, attracting swarms of curious visitors each week. They bring treats for my dad, ask questions about production, and always want to help with some aspect of guitar building. While I typically enjoy the excitement that visitors tend to bring, it is nice just to have some time to have the shop to myself to focus solely on my work. Most of you know that my dad works until well past midnight every day, so when I am there I make sure to get up early enough in the morning to have several hours to work on my own. I always take time to enjoy the silence before the storm, as I like to think of it. I like that it is quiet, unless I am the one making noise, I feel productive and am not stopping production to chat, or move pie and a barrel of cheezy poofs from my workspace.

Working at my house in Asheville is somewhat similar to the silent shop mornings. The only visitors I get are Harper coming to remind me she is bored, maybe a bee wandering up from the woods beyond my deck to see what is happening, or an occasional neighbor. I have been home for the past few weeks and have been cutting pearl, putting together ukuleles, and inlaying fingerboards. Oh and writing blogs :-)

Last week, on my deck, I shaped braces, shaved kerfing, and fitted the top and back onto a soprano ukulele. I am really excited about this particular ukulele because I am making it for a good friend. When it is possible, I like to take time to get to know someone I make an instrument for, at least little bit, because I think that makes the instrument more of a collaboration, and less something I just make. I have found that the best partnerships are when I am given artistic license to make what I know the person will love, adding little touches for them, but keeping the artistry for myself. This mutual trust is sometimes difficult to achieve, so when it happens, as in this case, it is a truly positive and exciting experience.

Signed uderside of soprano top for my friend Kyler.

The koa for this ukulele is a piece left over from my #16 guitar. I am so glad I was able to use it because that piece of wood is more special than most, with curls radiating out like sun rays through the grain. I am a firm believer in wasting as little materials as possible, this incredible wood especially, and sopranos allow for that more willingly than larger instruments which I enjoy.

Kyler's initials, inlaid in the headstock of his ukulele.

While I miss working with my dad, and having his vast guitar knowledge and building expertise just feet away, it has been great to get to work on my instruments on my own time, then go for a run with Harper at the Biltmore Estate every day. Once we run past the lines of people on Segways winding their way down the paths surrounding the winery, we are generally alone to enjoy the scenery and history of the property. The only thing missing is a visitor or two to perk up a lonely afternoon. Will you come visit me in Asheville when (someday) I have my very own shop here? I sure hope you will.

Robert Frost

Something I feel I haven't expressed enough in the stories I write to you is how lucky I feel to get to do my job. Not just because I have the opportunity to hang out with my dad, which is something I hadn't done much until I started working with him, but because I get to meet some truly amazing people. The folks who trust me to build them a guitar are pretty much the best people I have ever met. The neat thing is that I get to know people beyond our mutual affinity for guitars and ukuleles. A shared love of To Kill a Mockingbird, appreciation for how much we love our dogs, or goats or catfish...To me, building someone a guitar is a very personal business. I attempt to meld what they imagine with what I want to make for them. Small custom touches, however, require me to know something inherent to my client's character. I like to think it is a trust in me to appreciate what I am told enough to turn that into a tangible part of the instrument I am making for them.

A specific example of one of these personal touches comes in the form of a tiny acorn that I inlaid on the fingerboard of a guitar now owned by a fellow named Mike. He told me that his most cherished book is a limited edition copy of a book of poems by Robert Frost, and stamped into the cover is a small acorn.  He hoped I could incorporate the design in his guitar somehow. Upon hearing about his admiration for Mr. Frost's work, a memory bubbled into my conscious thought; I recalled a face full of snow as I attempted to walk on snowshoes for the first time, which happened to take place at Robert Frost's house.

Robert Frost Farm, Ripton VT

During my time at Vermont Law School, I served as an intern for the Green Mountain National Forest. One of my favorite days while I was working with the Forest Service was the day I rode along with one of their law enforcement officers. After tracking some tree poachers, testing to make sure the correct trees were cut during a logging operation, and slipping down a snowy hill clutching to maple saplings in order to dig through illegally dumped trash, my reward was to visit Robert Frost's cabin. That February in Vermont was still a bit snowy, so in order to navigate the several feet of snow that covered the ground, Officer Mike (not the guitar orderer Mike) strapped my boots into snowshoes. "Go give em a try!" he encouraged. I took one step up the bank toward Robert Frost's house and due to the unwieldy nature of snowshoes, I promptly fell face first into a 5 foot drift of snow. I don't even think Mike laughed half as much as I would have had it not been me upended in the snow, struggling to right myself. Anyway, after practicing a bit more, we walked around the property and checked out the house. The property reminded me of home and my Granny, holding the same magic quietness of Rugby. I thought Robert and I probably would have had similar ideas of an awesome spot to hang out.

Testing out some snowshoes. It didn't turn out well.

When I delivered the guitar I made for Mike, he gave me a copy of that book of poems he referenced during our first phone conversation. The books are so pristine I have been reluctant to mess them up, but the other day I decided to carefully remove the delicate packaging and see what poems were in there other than the popular ones I already knew. While perusing the beautiful prose, one poem jumped out that solidified my suspicion that Robert would have loved hanging out Rugby. This particular poem, the power of which nearly knocked the breath from my lungs, is called Ghost House. (I have included it at the end of this post.) For me, the words paint such a vivid picture of loss and time gone by; I can't help but see my Granny's house become clear in my mind, once full of life, but it now sits lifeless, letting nature retake its claim on the land.

Frost's line, 'The footpath down to the well is now healed' especially reminds me of summertime with my Granny. Every time I visit now I search in vain for the path behind her house nestled between two hills that lead to the reservoir of the spring, the water from which is directed into the house. The path I am thinking of was barely wide enough for our feet. I remember walking one foot in front of the other, pretending to balance like a tightrope walker, careful to stay only on the dirt, avoiding any grass that leaned in my way. There was a black pipe sticking from the ground bubbling the overflow water from the spring's reservoir. As we sat recovering from the uphill climb, my Granny would always say, "That there is the best water there is. It is even better when you drink it straight from the mountain." We would both take sips from the pipe, savoring the cool clean water that really does taste better than any water I can remember drinking. I would lay down, my face pressed to the large cement slab that covered the reservoir and just listen to the water gurgle far below. The cement would always be warm, having been heated by the sun all day. Though it isn't anything of consequence, it is a fond memory. I am thankful for Mike for providing the kindling to spark that little memory from happy summers past.

I know in business folks who purchase the goods I provide are called clients. That doesn't sit quite right for me though as I really consider each person who trusts me enough to make them something that hopefully will remain part of their lives, to be passed down to their children, a friend. With each instrument I make and send to someone, a little bit of me goes with it. There is no way for me to separate my work from myself, so to me, business is extremely personal. I take comfort in the fact that I gain a new friend with each instrument I make and I want to make sure you all know how thankful I am that you allow me to have that opportunity.

Ghost House

I dwell in a lonely house I know

That vanished many a summer ago,

   And left no trace but the cellar walls,

   And a cellar in which the daylight falls

And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

   The orchard tree has grown one copse

   Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart

In that vanished abode there far apart

   On that disused and forgotten road

   That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout

And hush and cluck and flutter about:

   I hear him begin far enough away

   Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.

I know not who these mute folk are

   Who share the unlit place with me—

   Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—

Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—

   With none among them that ever sings,

   And yet, in view of how many things,

As sweet companions as might be had.

EmiSunshine and Smedley

I have been working on a neat ukulele this week. Not particularly special in terms of specifications, just a koa tenor style ukulele, but what is special is the recipient. Her name is EmiSunshine and she is kind of the cutest little girl I have ever met. She is an incredible singer, songwriter, and entertainer, but most of all she is just a kind energetic girl who loves that she gets to sing and play a ukulele.

EmiSunshine checking out my #7 guitar, built for Doc Watson

Emi, followed by her parents Randall and Alisha, walked into the shop on a foggy, sleety morning in January. I had a feeling we would be buddies just based on the fact that they have an accent as thick as my dad's, paired with a deep appreciation and respect for old guitars and vintage country music. And then Emi made my ukulele sound better than I can. After we spent an afternoon hanging out, eating barbecue cooked by my awesome cousin Becky and playing a little bit of music, I felt like I had known them forever. I think it is because their goodnatured demeanor fit perfectly with the laid back, simple character that defines Rugby. After listening to some new songs and talking about old guitars, what I didn't expect to have in common with Emi and her family was an ornery turkey situation.

Emi and her mom Alisha testing my uke

Have I ever told you about my dad's turkey Smedley? Well, I remember him as a feather headed monster, quite a bit larger than I was at the time, with a beak more dangerous than sticking your hand in a snapping turtle's hole. I was told to stay away from him, and though he never did anything to me I would run as fast as I could to the house if he ever caught sight of me outside. Anyway, before I knew Smedley, my dad would don a motorcycle helmet and leather riding jacket and box with Smedley out in the yard. I am told Smedley enjoyed it, but I am skeptical. On the other hand, I have never been in a situation where I wanted to box with a turkey.

While Emi and I played with Harper (Harper wouldn't dream of pecking anyone's eyes out) Alisha told us about their turkey Mr. Turk. It seems he has a similar mean streak that afflicted Smedley. When she drives up to her house he sees her coming and hightails it (ha!) to confront her before she heads into the house. She says uses her purse as a weapon or a shield, but he typically manages to chase her from the car to the house until she is breathing heavily behind the locked door. "I know something you could do to get even with him," my dad said. He then proceeded to tell us the story of how he thought he killed Smedley.

Wayne and Smedley

Granny's house has a chimney constructed of stacked gray rocks that handles the smoke from the woodstove in the kitchen. I remember the chimney being another area that my Granny would suggest I avoid because the cracks between the rocks were ideal for bees to make their hives. One day after a particularly brutal boxing match, my dad took a biscuit from the kitchen and sprinkled its crumbs out by the chimney. He then encouraged Smedley to come over and enjoy a little snack. He then went into the kitchen and pounded on the wall, expelling angered bees from their hives within the chimney. At first Smedley didn't seem to notice the bees, and my dad began to wonder if turkeys were immune to stings, or perhaps his feathers served as a sufficient shield. After a while though, that turned out not to be the case as Smedley forgot about his biscuit crumbs and twitched his feathers and jerked his head around to find what was afflicting him. He then took off toward the granary, a cloud of bees in pursuit above him. About halfway to the granary he flopped over into the grass. My dad said, "I thought, oh Lord, I killed ol' Smedley dead as a hammer." He waited for the bees to dissipate then walked out to check on the poor turkey. As he laid his hand on Smedley's limp wing, Smedley shot up and took off running into the woods as fast as his legs would carry him. My dad said he didn't see him again until lunchtime the next day.

Hopefully Alisha will have better luck with Mr. Turk and won't have to resort to a motorcycle helmet for protection from his wrath. Ornery turkey advice aside, I am so glad EmiSunshine and her lovely family came to brighten up a dreary winters day.

Harper, EmiSunshine and me

Happy Holidays!

I suppose I will begin this post with the same sentiment I have used to preface the past few: apologizing for my lax writing schedule, or lack of schedule all together. It has been a busy couple of months for me.  My time has been taken by working on guitars, finishing ukuleles on a deadline, and mopping melted freezer water from my dad's floor. Oh, and on Thanksgiving, with only several hours warning, I was tasked with making the turkey...

For several months now I have been working on a copy of a Gibson Nick Lucas guitar. There are several reasons it has taken significantly longer than any other guitar I have made, but the most significant one is because everything is different from how I had been making Martin inspired guitars. "Well, the only thing that is consistent about Gibson is that they are inconsistent," Herb told me as I struggled to find correct measurements and patterns for this guitar.  My dad has made them before, but despite being the borderline hoarder he is, he somehow didn't save patterns for this kind of guitar. Luckily I have a pretty awesome friend, Mike, who made me this neat label, helped me find great measurements, and shared a little back story on ol' Nick Lucas and his guitar shape of choice.

 I felt more alone on this build than I ever have, figuring things out on my own and working by myself while my dad was traveling abroad. In school I would always check my understanding of class material by making myself quizzes and see how much I could do without consulting my notes. In this situation, I was curious how much I leaned on my dad as necessity versus availability, and while working totally on my own was stressful, I found I knew a lot more than I thought I did. Still, when he returned, it was really nice to have his encouragement and knowledge just a worktable away. As I sat in the spray room, perched on an upturned finish bucket, my dad held the Gibson book open for me to the page that displayed the correct sunburst. I sat for hours working to make each side look exactly like the picture, and he stood right there, despite having work of his own he could do, encouraging me with each squeeze of the spray gun.

Another thing that has kept me busy is that I have been commissioned by Santa to make some ukuleles in time for Christmas. It was kind of fun being an elf, I mean I already have the height for the job, but it was a bit stressful knowing I absolutely had to get things finished by a specific date. I enjoyed trying out new techniques and ideas, trying out a double pearl soundhole and playing with stain colors on maple. Here is a picture of a little soprano, and as I don't even know the recipient so no surprises should be ruined.



Finally, on Thanksgiving, my dad's refrigerator broke leaking water all over the floor, melting everything in the freezer, and causing near catastrophe. Nick and I drove up on Wednesday, but because the forecast predicted snow, my aunt Shirleen asked me to take the turkey on with me in case she couldn't get out early enough in the morning. And then it snowed and I had to make it. Luckily it needed to thaw, but the rest of the fridge and freezer contents did not fare as well. We ended up piling everything in a cooler and letting it freeze outside in the 25 degree snowy weather hoping no varmints would pillage it while we mopped up puddles every now and again.

Not to toot my own horn, but I am a pretty good cook. However, turkeys have always been the job of a parent or Shirleen while I busy myself with lesser things like sides or desserts. Like guitar making when I was younger, only coming into the shop and seeing the process in pieces, I have only seen bits of the turkey prepping process. I remember something gross we don't eat coming in a bag where the stuffing goes, and lots and lots of salt and pepper being sprinkled on everything but that is about it. When I cut away the plastic covering the turkey, I had only vague ideas on what needed to be done. I put the phone on speaker, and Shirleen instructed me on preparing the turkey. Our conversation went something like this: "Make sure you season the inside too." "What is a gizzard?" "There is a neck, and it is where?!"

It turned out surprisingly better than I thought, but really, as much as I hate to admit it, I know that butter is usually the secret to making things taste good, so when it doubt, just add more butter. My aunt Pat says that I should be prepared because since I did such a good job it will be my responsibility for all future Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I am not sure I am quite ready for the responsibility, but I guess it is good to know I can do it. Kind of like putting a Nick Lucas together. With enough concentration and attention to detail, I can do things (mostly) by myself.

I hope you all have an excellent holiday filled with family and love and I wish you the very best and happiest 2015.

Trick or Treat

This past month I have been so busy making instruments that I haven't been able to write you any stories! (Kind of) seriously though, I have made 3 ukuleles and finished a couple of guitar bodies! All while my dad left me in charge of his shop while he galavanted through France. Hm, I typed that because it sounded like fun, but imagining my dad doing anything resembling galavanting doesn't seem quite right....so in the spirit of honesty, let me rephrase per his recounting of the events: My dad reluctantly flew to France to attend a friend's birthday party, and while there, he played music at multiple venues and as usual ended up having a fun time, though all the high quality wine and unprocessed food hurt his stomach. I am going to go ahead and assume that France did not provide for him the culinary delights offered by a KFC or Cracker Barrel, much to his strong dismay.

Anyway, back to me. I received a request for another story about my Granny, and with Halloween coming up I had hoped to incorporate something honoring the holiday. I don't usually do anything particularly special other than making Halloween inspired pizza because our neighborhood is inhabited mostly by retirees, but I like to spend the day (and days leading up to Halloween) watching scary movies while I cut inlays. Or perhaps while I write you a story. (I am currently watching a documentary detailing the true story of the Amityville Horror if you were wondering.)

Fall in Rugby is incredibly beautiful. By October the leaves are proudly waving a final goodbye from their high branches, shrouded in brilliant color, making the hills behind my Granny's house look as though a forest fire is fast approaching. My favorite years are the rare ones when the red and orange leaves prevail and overtake the slightly less beautiful brown and yellow. This year was one of those years. On her birthday, Harper and I walked back in those hills of my Granny's property, exploring the old wood granary, graying with age, where I used to sneak in and teeter across the grain and corn cobs used for animal feed. I would pretend that the large open room next to the drying bin where, years before my existence, tobacco had been hung from the rafters, was my house on the prairie, complete with a lean-to that braved harsh winters. (Laura Inglalls Wilder was one of my favorite authors at the time.) The thick branches of the apple trees nearby were heavy with fruit, and reminded me of when I walked into the house, the rooms would be filled with the warm and welcoming smell of baked apples. When I was tall enough to reach I would sneak one (or twenty) of the dried apple chips my Granny had placed on the rack above the stove.

My Granny's backyard, the granary is on the left.

Several times during these fall visits I remember I was able to help choose the pumpkin for the Jack-o-Lantern that would sit on the front steps. As we gingerly stepped through my Granny's garden, trying to avoid the vegetables growing in rows, my dad instructed me to check each side of the pumpkin I chose, making sure there were no flat or discolored spots other than on the bottom. A lot of times we would discover that there were no perfect, non flattened, non discolored pumpkins, so my dad would change his tune and say that these spots were ok because we really just needed the sides of the pumpkin facing outward to look presentable.  We would then take the pumpkin into the small room off the kitchen, sitting it on newspapers covering the little black and white speckled table under the window. It was always my job to scrape the insides out, and pick the seeds from the gooey orange guts. I remember always complaining about my job. My dad's job was to carve the pumpkin, as he is much more of an expert with a knife than I will ever be (though I am proud to announce that I have been preferring to use a pocket knife for more and more of the guitar making process these days). Plus I was maybe 4 years old or somewhere around there, so it was probably not most responsible option to give me a knife. Maybe someday I will tell you what happened when I was eight and tried to remove brownies from a pan with a knife. But maybe you can just imagine. It was always my decision where to place the triangle eyes, nose, and snaggletoothed mouth, and to decide how many teeth the Jack-o-Lantern had. I would decide depending on how many teeth I had lost recently. I never questioned why we only carved the traditional face until my dad noted it when I called to ask for some good Halloween stories. He said that was just always how he carved it, and how his dad carved it; that is just what a Jack-o-Lantern looks like. Good enough reason for me, though I am currently considering using Leah's idea of wielding a dremel to make the coolest looking Jack-o-Lantern ever, but that is a story for another time.

I only spent a few actual Halloween weekends at my Granny's house, but as I recall, nothing too special happened as people lived so far away from each other that trick-or-treaters would typically assemble at their elementary school or somewhere similar to fill pillowcases and orange plastic Jack-o-Lanterns with candy instead of driving door to door. The only evening visitors to my Granny's house each year would be Lauren and Leah. These days, every year my dad buys a bag of candy in the guise of providing for Halloween visitors, but I know he secretly wants it for himself because he never sounds all that dismayed when he tells me that no one came by and now he has all of these fun-size Snickers bars sitting in the shop.

When I called to chat the other day, my dad told me that when he was younger the kids were more into the tricks than the treats. I imagined knocking over mail boxes, toilet papering someone's house, but these were country tricks I had never heard of. He told me he participated in placing hay bales in the middle of streets so cars couldn't pass. Dirt roads, he assured me, where cars were already going slow. He said the serious kids would chop down a tree to cross the road to school so no one would be able to attend the next day. But that trick rare as it was hard work since you couldn't use a chainsaw for fear of being heard and were left to hack away all night with an axe running to hide each time a car passed. He also told me of a trick he knew of but of course had not participated in, where kids took to placing a fresh cow pie on the seat of a neighbor's tractor, then waited for them to come help one of those poor folks who got stuck behind a tree or in a hay bale. You can probably imagine what happened next. He also said turning over outhouses was a popular trick. My dad absolutely loves practical jokes so I have trouble believing that he has not been the culprit for some of these antics, but sure, let's just remember the fun, safe, happy Halloween times I had in Rugby because you know I can't even make the mongoose work in the shop.

Meeting with George Gruhn

Sometimes I worry that the folks in the guitar world won't be too quick to accept me without my dad behind me showing me the way. Lately I have been taking more steps on my own to find out. When Nick and I visited Nashville earlier this summer, I met with George Gruhn, one of the most knowledgeable folks around when it comes to guitars. After everything I had heard; good from my dad, somewhat mixed to downright scary from most everyone else, I had no idea how I would be received walking in to his shop all by my lonesome, with only a big fiberglass guitar case to shield me from whatever I happened to encounter.

Walking in to the large white building, I was a little bit nervous, but the two employees helping patrons on the first floor were incredibly friendly and quickly buzzed up to George's office that I was waiting for him. I had called George a few days prior to ask if he had time to check out a couple of my guitars and he was very friendly and seemed excited to visit with me even though my dad wouldn't be joining me.

I brought my #18, a 12-fret Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought, because as I was working on it, my dad said as I glued the top together, "This is the one you need to show George. He loves 12-fret D guitars and I have a feeling this one is going to sound really good." I also brought my #19 curly maple 000 because it is more what I like to do, so I could talk to him about marketing local wood, smaller body guitars as well.

In George's office, located on the second floor of his shop, I sat in an antique, hand-carved chair wedged between several terrariums that housed large, wary looking snakes that could probably constrict the life out of me were they so inclined. I watched as George lifted my guitar from its case. "Very nice, I love 12-fret dreadnoughts. Don't worry about the snakes, they are all very docile," he assured me. After plucking out a few tunes he told me that the only problem he could find with my #18 was that it wasn't his. I decided to take that as a compliment. He and one of his guitar buyers played each guitar in turn and seemed to enjoy them both. After a while George asked if I wanted to go to lunch. I said sure.

"Good, because Freddie needs some lunch too," George declared as I raced to follow him stalking out of the room. Freddie, a bearded dragon, lives in another terrarium in George's office situated front and center so you can't miss it as you walk through the door. As I mentioned in a prevous post, I have met Freddie before, and remembered George plopping him in my lap and promptly leaving the room for what I could guess was almost forever. I wasn't sure what to do with him sitting there, he isn't really a creature to be petted, and after a while my dad commented that he was smiling despite my stiff unwelcoming posture. I couldn't decide whether Freddie was enjoying our visit or if he was preparing to eat me.

George drove me to a greek diner across the street from his shop, the sign out front boasting that it has been featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. As we sat down, George asked the waitress to bring him some left-over greens, "not a salad, no dressing!", but just some veggies in a to-go box for his bearded dragon. Upon seeing the girl's confused look, he pulled his phone from his pocket and proceeded to swipe through photos of Freddie, as a proud grandfather might when presenting his grandchildren to an appeasing stranger. I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I studied the menu items furiously. The waitress returned soon after with a styrofoam box filled with greens. "Oh excellent! Freddie can eat for a week on this!" George exclaimed happily.

After our food arrived it was back to guitar talk, and I appreciate very much all of the kind words and advice George offered. One of my favorite things he said about my instruments is that my instruments have a soul within them. I see that my dad is able to do that with his instruments, and if I have learned to do that from him, I am exceptionally proud. To me, each of my instruments is a living breathing thing, and if you consider external elements such as humidity expanding and contracting the wood, it is essentially doing just that. To have someone who has seen and played many amazing guitars be able to find a soul within my guitars was a big deal for me.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit, making another small tentative step into this world of guitars that seems so daunting to me. I think the main reason for that is because I care so much more about the construction, the journey of each instrument, and what I get from doing that work than I do from actually having the finished product in front of me. Each time I finish a guitar I am very proud to see it and have it and share it with people, but there is always a sadness to knowing that the journey is finished. I guess if I look at my job as a whole, the journey will never be finished and it is comforting to know that my guitars are enjoyed and that the love I put into each will continue even when the work is finished.

Gone Fishin' (part 2)

Summer in Rugby is one of my most favorite times. Perhaps it is because during my childhood that is when I spent the majority of my time there, filling my summer breaks from school with country shenanigans. Or maybe just because that is when nature is at its most content. Everything is colorful and blooming, gardens are filled with fat, nutrient rich produce, leaves are proud to display their bright green surfaces, animals enjoy their time in the sun, and Wilson Creek runs full and strong.

It is difficult to get my dad to do much of anything with me if it doesn't take place in his shop, or at least has a guitar involved. Last summer though, I got him to take me fishing up in the mountain behind our house, telling me stories of when he went with his dad when he was younger.

I was reminded of this story when on Friday evening my husband and I went to a fancy restaurant, even nicer than my dad's go-to gourmet haunt, The Cracker Barrel, if you can believe it, and I was deciding between two entrees. After consulting with Stewart, our server, he warned me that the trout entree for the evening had its head and tail still intact, in case that would be a problem for me. In my typical, endearing (maybe?), unfiltered fashion, I proceeded to tell him about the time Leah and I caught a trout from the creek and bludgeoned it to death with a stick, then attempted to fillet it following directions we found on Youtube. We then proceeded to bake it intact because the flimsy knife and large plastic plate adorned with Christmas scenes proved to be inadequate for successfully butchering a whole fish. (You can read a more indepth account in a past blog entry titled Gone Fishing, if you really want to.) He went away, probably filled with pity/concern for my poor husband, assuming I am definitely insane, but also hopefully with the understanding that I a head-on trout for dinner is the least of my worries. If you were wondering, I decided to order the grouper entree because I am obviously already an expert on catching and preparing trout.

Anyway, I asked my dad to go fishing with me, and he heartily agreed, much to my surprise. We dug out the fishing rods Leah and I had been using earlier in the summer, and set about finding bait. My dad said he always dug worms from a special spot in Granny's yard, right next to the branch. (That is Rugby talk for a small stream, not the appendage of a tree.) We loaded up a shovel and went to digging holes in her yard near the bank. I am not sure how many earthworms we actually found, but they filled a styrofoam coffee cup pretty sufficiently. After gathering our worms we headed out to the creek (the bit of a water network that is a step bigger than a branch). My dad told me he used to catch minnows in the branch and use them in lieu of worms, but it takes significant patience to do that, and neither of us felt it would behoove us to work all day to catch little fish in order to catch more fish. We just wanted to go straight for the big prize.

As I plunked my line into the water and proceeded to wait on the bank, my dad told me that his dad showed him how to fish long ago. It isn't just throwing a line into the water and hoping for something to bite, there is actually skill and strategy to it. (I thought my strategy of plunking was right, but apparently not.) Apparently, using a method works though, as my grandfather could catch ten fish when everyone else would be lucky to catch one. The game warden, John Emerson, lived just up the street from my grandparent's house, and apparently, he wasn't the best hunter. He knew my Grandfather Walt was, so he would always invite him to fish or hunt with him every chance he could. He would 'confiscate' any game over the limit that my grandfather had procured, citing official game warden rules of course. My grandfather would happily oblige since Mr. Emerson would often fail to ticket him while hunting or fishing alone, and my grandfather brought home anything over the imposed limit. Mr. Emerson would be sure to take two or three fish from my grandfather's catch though, just to teach him a lesson.

My dad instructed me to crouch behind rocks, and, "don't let the fish know you are there." I didn't really understand because how is a fish going to see me when I am perched quietly, albeit precariously, on a rock above white rushing bubbly water? "I don't know how, but hey can," he assured me. I don't typically associate my dad with acts of stealth, except maybe when he is unleashing the mongoose on some poor gullible victim in his shop, so I was impressed to see him slither between the boulders lining the creek with surprising ease and expertise. I followed his advice, slipping behind a mossy rock and tossing my line into the water. After a while lo and behold, I caught one! When I triumphantly looked up to show my dad, he had already caught two fish, and was proceeding to clean them on bank. That was where Leah and I went wrong, you are supposed to bust out your trusty pocket knife and dig out the fish guts right there on a rock, not take the whole fish home in an emptied salt and pepper kettle chip bag. After he cleaned my little fish for me, we caught a few more and headed home, deciding we had a sufficient amount for dinner.

I baked the trout, heads and tails and all, in a pan filled with fresh onions, zucchini and squash from Herb's garden. Aside from my other trout catching-to-eating adventure, it was my favorite dinner I have ever made. And those who know me, know I can make a pretty delicious dinner. So maybe the main reason I love summer in Rugby so much is because I am surrounded by amazing fresh produce, and if I want, I can pluck my dinner straight from the creek with (hopefully) only a bit of struggle. The extra work of preparing my own food is worth so much more to me than having the money to purchase similar ingredients from a store. I know it hasn't always seemed like a luxury for my family to have to tend to a garden and take care of livestock while living on a farm, but I am so thankful my Granny, Aunt Shirleen, and my dad have taught me how to do that so I am able to fully appreciate where my food comes from.

Gossip

"Did you see that car that just went down the road?" my Granny asked her friend Lola. "I haven't seen it before, wonder who they are visiting." Every morning when I stayed with my Granny I would hear one side of this conversation, only varying in type of vehicle and the driver's assumed business in Rugby.

There were two phones in Granny's house. One hung on the wall in the living room, just within reach of the large scratchy floral print chair that faced the TV, its cord curling to the floor and back up to the receiver. The other was an old black rotary model that sat on a small antique table facing the one window in my grandmother's room. There was a small chair tucked underneath the table.  The window looked out over the front porch, yard, and the road beyond the garden. I used to love playing with this phone because you could put your finger in a hole, pull it around in a circle and let go, where it would make a delightful ringing sound. From this phone my Granny made her important morning calls.

Every day she had a rotation of female friends whom she called, or who called her, detailing the community gossip of the day. A lot of the time the topics would include gardening and trips to town along with the curiosity over a new vehicle on the road. Also, obituaries were a pretty big deal.

I mentioned in my last post that my dad's Granny would never miss the Grand Ole Opry or the obituaries on the radio. The same can be said of my Granny, about the obituaries anyway. Every day at noon, right before her 'stories' she would sit and listen to a little black radio, roughly the shape of a loaf of French bread; not a baguette, but those smaller fatter ones typically used for garlic bread, adjusting the antenna to be sure she heard every syllable. I remember the radio well, it sat in the living room also within reach of the large scratchy chair. Every day gloomy organ music wavered from the speakers before the announcer would read through the list of community members who had passed on. I knew never to disturb Granny during the obituaries because it seemed of dire importance that she hear each name read off. My aunt told me the other day that once when I was very small I accidentally knocked the radio off the table, and worried I had broken it, ran to tell Granny, "I'm sorry, I think I broke your obituary."

My dad told me that Granny Ollie (his granny) would also listen to the obituaries religiously. He said that sometimes the radio would happily announce that, "Today we are blessed with no deaths." She would look disconcertingly at the radio and grunt, "Huh." and switch the program off. I suppose that just meant there was less fodder for conversation with her friends later, not that she was particularly upset that no one died that day. My dad also joked that maybe she felt the need to listen to be sure she wasn't on it.

It seems kind of ridiculous that these ladies would pay so much attention to the deaths of their neighbors, or if a foreign car drives through their tiny pocket of the world. I think though that it is an incredible display of community that isn't often seen this day in age. I remember someone not from here complaining to me that they attended a fundraiser at the rescue squad and were not received as highly as they expected to be, given the amount they donated to the cause. My reply was that this tight knit community is not driven by money, so it is not necessarily possible to buy your way in. You have to be a respectful neighbor, take notice of the odd visitor, and maybe even listen to the obituaries.