The New Guitar
I’ve been looking for a while now and had a pretty clear idea of what I was looking for. I wanted a Dreadnaught body shape, I wanted a Sitka Spruce top with Rosewood back and sides, I wanted it hand made, without a lot of frilly inlay work, and I knew what I wanted to spend…or at least I thought I did.
The day started out on a good note as I found two hour parking right out front, pulling up to the front door just as someone else was leaving. Dusty Strings. is in the basement of a building that houses a Greek restaurant and an art gallery. It’s part of the old Fremont neighborhood and one of the few remaining businesses that has continued to exist in a place where everything seems built during the dot-com largess.
I liked the feel at Dusty Strings. I like the woman who helped me pick out guitars and within a few minutes of arriving, she had a line of guitars waiting to audition for the job of being My Guitar. It didn’t take long before I had narrowed down the choices to five. My brother showed up and we moved the small collection into a little room where we could hear them without the competing guitar shop noise, also I wanted to hear them being played by someone I knew and to have someone help confirm or deny what I was hearing. After a bit I went back and pulled another guitar off the wall that I had played but discarded, and so for about an hour, we picked up and played the six guitars we had with us.
Thinking back, I knew before we brought in all those guitars which one was my favorite. I knew it from the moment I picked it up and played the first chord that I had a guitar that was MY guitar in that group—Problem was, it was the most expensive guitar I was looking at. Problem was, it was way more money than I was prepared to spend.
The afternoon wore on, and we cycled through the guitars over and over again, but nothing changed my mind. Both of us agreed that we had a clear winner—the only issue left was what to do about it. I called Sweetie to see what she thought, and like she always does, she said to go for it.
After they packed it into it’s case, and let me have my fill of swag, my brother and I headed out into the rush hour traffic heading up Fremont Avenue. The moment I turned the corner and saw that my car was gone, I knew it had been towed. Most of the time when this sort of thing happens, I entertain fantasies that the car thief ring I have managed to keep one step ahead of all my life, has finally caught up with me, and it’s only after calling the police to report the crime perpetrated against me that a suggestion my car might have just been towed, is made to me.
Not this time. I knew right away. Mostly because mounted on the telephone pole directly behind the spot my car used to occupy, was a red “No Parking Between 4-6” sign that I had managed not to see. On the telephone pole in front of where my car had no doubt been taking a restful nap, was a nice bright clean green sign stating “2 Hour Parking”. I tried to assuage my anger by rationalizing the perhaps there wasn’t enough room to put both signs on the same post, though clearly there was. Fortunately there was also the telephone number to call for the towing company, and after a few misdials and wrong company connections, I found my car in a lot up at 122nd and Aurora.
Half an hour in rush hour traffic and $85 dollars later, they buzzed me through the little door to the left of the office and sitting next to the large driving range fence in lot 5, was the 402. After a quick inspection, to make sure that the only dents on it were ones either Sweetie or I caused, I climbed in to make the long trip back to Tacoma.
This is when I noticed that the new I-pod I had received for my birthday, the one I had just spent days and days ripping my entire CD collection into my computer for, the one that Sweetie had just bought a little FM transmitter for so I could listen to it in the car, that one: Was gone.
That goddamn tow truck driver reached into my car and popped my I-pod into his greasy shirt pocket. I guess he thought, who would ever know? In the end, it would just be his word against mine, right? I stormed back into the office to let them know what I felt about drivers who steal property out of the cars they tow. I filled out the paper work, and demanded to speak to the person in charge. Oh, he was out, because, you know, it was after five. I cursed where I could, and even found a bewildered driver I could hurl some additional abuse towards before I left. I called Sweetie from the road to tell her what had happened and was immediately beeped and cursed at by a driver who thought my cell phone driving abilities left much to be desired.
I hated the drive home. My stomach, already twisted from the amount spent on a guitar, further turned from retrieving my towed car, wrung tighter still by an I-pod stealing tow truck driver and an angry cell-phone hating Geo driver, was on the verge of emptying itself.
It didn’t and though it took a while, I made it home stomach content intact. Sweetie was nice enough to meet me at the car and in hardly two minutes, found the stolen I-Pod.
It was up in the back of the glove box, put there either by a considerate tow truck driver, or the scatterbrained idiot owner of the car, me. I had already looked there once, putting my hand in to reach the part I couldn’t see, but in my conviction that there was little point due to the stoleness of the whole situation, I somehow didn’t feel it.
Yes, I called the tow truck company back. Yes I apologized; to two different people no less. I felt worse and better both at the same time. Perhaps it wasn’t the universe that had conspired against me after all—perhaps it was only my Id kicking my Egos ass.
The new guitar is great by the way…plays like a dream and sounds amazing.
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