tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-406963065018880212024-03-05T02:16:34.545-05:00Salt Creek GazetteChip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-59967446867891940962012-07-05T10:22:00.000-04:002012-07-05T11:44:08.964-04:00Getting It There<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This little post is way overdue: This humble bandana was destined to make it to Maine, and <i>with a little help from me friends</i>, it did!<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"> One morning during my 1987 attempt at hiking the Appalachian Trail I tied a couple of wet bandanas to my pack frame in order to let them dry during the days hike. Liking the colorful look, I decided to tie all my bandanas on and took on the trail name "Bandana Man."</span><br />
So a few nights later at Standing Indian Shelter I noticed that a fellow hiker, Laura "Blue Moon" had a cool, red, official <a href="https://www.atctrailstore.org/catalog/iteminfo.cfm?itemid=141&compid=1">AT Conservancy bandana</a>. So, after a few not-so-subtle hints that she should hand it over to me, she was gracious enough to do just that! But she warned that it was destined to make it to Mt Katahdin, and by accepting the gift it would become my responsibility to get it there. I gladly accepted! (She was pretty awesome for giving it to me!) So that night the bandana was signed, in <a href="http://www.sharpie.com/enUS/Pages/sharpiemarkers.aspx">Sharpie</a> by all hikers in attendance: "Blue Moon", "The Mad Norwegian", "Hot Buns", "Wing Foot", and me.<br />
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Well, if you've read my <a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2010/04/kay-wood-life-well-lived.html">previous post</a> about my hike, you'll know that I didn't make it. I got hurt in North Carolina and left the trail with the bandana in my possession. To my eternal disappointment, I never made it to Maine. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Beloved Bums</td></tr>
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Flash forward 22 yrs, and I one day get an email from my hiking buddie Melanie - 1/2 of a married hiking duo known as "The Bobsie Bums." She and her husband Bruce (I <i>love</i> these guys!) had found me on-line in order to let me know that a mutual friend had died, and during out email exchanges we hatched a plan to <a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2010/06/bobsie-bums-and-appalachian-trail-on.html">meet up near the Trail in Virginia for a few days of camping</a>. All this was in June, 2010. </div>
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We had a great little reunion with lots of sharing of stories, photos, re-reading of old correspondence, etc. It was great. And there was a plan to hit a little stretch of the AT for a little old time sake hiking and to do our part as trail angels. Trail angels are non-through hikers who show up with little treats for parched and hungry hikers who've been at it long enough to truly, truly appreciate a snickers bar and a <i>cold</i> coke. And this would prove an excellent time to carry out my plan of finding a through-hiker willing to carry "Blue Moon's" bandana all the way to Maine. </div>
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Luckily we happened upon a young hiker called "Ups" (also actually named Laura!) who was headed north and was willing to carry the bandana and agreed to send it back afterwards. Cool. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Meeting "Ups" along the trail.</td></tr>
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For the next few months we were able to <a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?trailname=8573">track "Ups" progress along the trail via an on-line blog</a> she kept, and were delighted to see that she made Katahdin in October. </div>
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Well, I sort of put the banbana out of my mind, so I was pleasantly blown away a few months later when I got a package from "Ups" containing the now well traveled bandana and a photo of "Ups" herself on Katahdin! Way to go "Ups"!<br />
So, though waaaay overdue, I'm now finally posting some photos. I'm thinking of having the bandana framed so I can tell this cool story over and over.<br />
My thanks to you "Ups" for getting it there, and thanks to Melanie for her efforts to get it into "Ups" hands! Y'all rock!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Ups" on Katahdin!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Ups" and her hiking pal "Sideways" the day we met them.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bandana Now Signed By A Whole New Generation of Through Hikers</td></tr>
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</div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-3991368302493847482010-12-05T16:07:00.005-05:002010-12-21T15:32:01.701-05:00The WeightA deeply personal post from Your Humble Blogger. This is something I wrote months ago about my own struggle with Muscular Dystrophy, but never intended to publish. I'm posting it now by request.<br />
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<i> Old Joke: </i><br />
<i> Q: How do you make God laugh?</i><br />
<i> A: Tell him your plans.</i><br />
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The young waitress paused at the doorway to the restaurant kitchen to casually talk to another staff member while effortlessly balancing a tray that must have been at least three feet in diameter. The tray was loaded with platters piled high with Tony Roma's barbeque - at least an entire tables order, yet it was being borne by the diminutive girl as though it was empty. <br />
I watched in fascination while considering what such a tray must weigh. For me that act would be as impossible as levitation. In fact, I wouldn't be able to hold an empty tray in that manner due to a type of Muscular Dystrophy that has compromised my upper body muscles. From my perspective, this scene was akin to watching Chinese acrobats perform seemingly impossible feats of contortion. After the brief exchange the waitress moved off into the dining room without the slightest hint of stress or strain. Amazing.<br />
Twenty four years ago I was a vigorous, active twenty something working full time in the local hospital, attending night school, and living for the weekends and days off when I could ride my bicycle into the nearby mountains or throw on a backpack disappear down a hiking trail. With strong legs and good endurance I'd always been about movement, and I was as at home in the outdoors as I was in my own living room. <br />
One day word came down through the family grapevine that my cousin, then nineteen, had been diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy. Like most people, my only image of M.D. then was of severely disabled kids in wheelchairs. And it was this vision I applied to my cousin as I cursed the fates that such an undeserving guy would suffer so. He was just beginning his life and now he was being told he'd most likely not even be able to feed himself at thirty. (A prediction that, thankfully, was entirely erroneous.) <br />
Some months later I got a call one day from my Mom informing me that since our large family represented a good genetic sample, and researchers from the Duke University Medical Center Department of Neurology would like for all of the cousins, nineteen of us in all, to be tested for the disease. It was all just routine, you see. They simply wanted a family baseline. So, she asked, would I mind making an appointment with a local neurologist, get the evaluation, get some blood work, and let the physician forward the results on to Duke. The Muscular Dystrophy Association would even pay for it all, and it would be an enormous help to my cousin. <br />
Naturally I was glad to help in way, and soon found myself in the doctor's office. It was an unusual exam. He had me sit down on the floor and get up, make a face, try to keep my eyes closed as the attempted to pry them open, resist downward and upward force with my arms, legs, etc. Nothing to it, really. <b>So I was utterly astounded when he casually said, as he continued to write on my chart, that he was diagnosing <i>me</i> with the disease. </b><br />
What? Wait, I'm only here for my cousin, I thought. Surely I misunderstood him. But there was no misunderstanding. He was telling me that I had Muscular Dystrophy. Never before or since have I been caught that "off guard." This doctor was a lot less pessimistic than the one who'd diagnosed my cousin. When asked what I could expect he explained that my upper body muscles would be affected and that I could expect fairly slow progression. I'd find some activities more difficult as the disease progressed. For example, getting a box down from an upper shelf would be difficult. (That prediction was dead on the money!) If anything, he painted a rosier picture than I'd ultimately realize. <br />
I left his office in somewhat of a daze with a million questions begging to be answered and as many dire scenarios playing out in my mind. Still, I felt fine. Great, even. How could this be correct. Just the weekend before my buddy and I had been backpacking. But, as I continued to reflect a few things I'd experienced began to make sense. I'd never been able to develop much in the way of upper body strength. I'd lift weights and do pull ups, but my relatively weak upper body musculature had never matched my strong legs and robust cardiovascular health. I'd always written this off to lack of ardor on my part and pledged to do work harder at the gym. I recalled an incident when I was part of a crew painting a school and found that it very difficult to lift the brush higher shoulder level. I even caught a little razzing for that one. The evidence, these incidents and many others like them, began to stack up. It was time for a little research. <br />
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Facioscapulohumeral M.D. is among the milder of the muscular dystrophies. It follows an autosomal dominate genetic pattern meaning it's <i>not</i> linked to gender and that one parent must have that disease to pass it on. As it's name suggests it primarily affects the scapular, upper arm, and facial muscles, though other muscle groups are affected as well. And it's very unlike Duchenne's M.D. - generally regarded as the worst variety that drastically affects the very young and typically results in death in the teens or early adulthood. Instead, FSH is generally slow progressing, and given it's predominance in the upper musculature leaves most with fairly normal function and doesn't generally attack ambulation in the early stages and for some individuals never at all. Most victims of the disease will be able to function more or less normally late into life. Of course, as with any genetic trait the severity with which it's expressed will vary widely between individuals. So, some, like my Mom, might have zero expression, while extreme cases sometimes see patients 100% disabled in their twenties - <br />
One classic trait of FSH is scapular winging. That's the tendency of the shoulder blades to, in effect, become un-moored and "wing" - or stick out - when the arms are extended. This looks rather like a chicken wing - hence the name. Since the scapula are no longer anchored properly, they no longer serve their proper role. So even while some arm and other muscles might still be fully functioning, the shoulder weakness will render even a modest weight unbearable. <br />
Another effect is Lordosis. Weakening back and abdominal muscles will cause a lower spine curvature that results in an odd posture that make the patient appear to be leaning backwards. In time, this will affect ambulation. <br />
Then there's facial weakness. There's actually a characteristic, mask-like look that some FSH victims have. Sort of an odd purse of the lips and a lack of expression. In fact the inability to whistle is one diagnostic indication.<br />
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So, it was obvious to me from my reading that FSH, while unfortunate, is actually quite mild in comparison to many of the other neuro-muscular disorders. It wouldn't shorten my life, it would most likely move slowly, and I'd live more or less normally for much of my life. <br />
And, as I said before, I felt great. So I went on with my life as before, but with the looming threat of disability always in the background. I did woodworking, mountain biking, hiking, and all manner of other active stuff without much problem. My thirties came and with them a wife and two children. The yard was mowed, furniture built, fish caught, trails hiked, vacations enjoyed - in short I was able to take care of business despite the slowly progressive, virtually unnoticeable, weakening. <br />
Able, that is, until the past five years or so. And now it seems that the effects of the disease have finally kicked into high gear. Sometime in that five year time frame I reached a tipping point that has seriously affected nearly every aspect of my life. <br />
Where I was able to refinish some hardwood floors just a couple of years ago, I now am exhausted merely by detailing the interior of a car. Using a weed eater in the yard is out of the question. Ditto for pushing a lawn mower or working in my wood shop for any length of time. I could go on, but it's lets just say that the list of activities still within my ability is now drastically shorter than those without. I've now witnessed a steady parade of pleasurable activities march out of my life - each one dearly missed. <br />
Most drastic of all is the hit to my ability to walk easily. My Lordosis, lower back curvature, is very pronounced. And renders me unable to stand up strait. I either lean backwards in n awkward fashion which causes my gait to be clumsy, or I stoop forward enabling me to walk a bit quicker, but brings about back pain. It also makes me look old. I now use a cane on a regular basis to help stabilize my gait. It's a little added security against falls which are a bit of a hazard. <br />
For anything requiring more than a few brief minutes of walking - going to the mall, for example - I now have one of those electric scooters. How sexy is that?<br />
That leaves me, at fifty, on edge about my future. At twenty I'd envisioned myself late in life as a fit, funky old guy on hiking up a mountain with a lifetime of adventures behind me and a happy trail before me. I was pretty much counting on my continued enjoyment of the outdoors to provide the satisfaction in my life as I blithely eschewed materialism. All I needed was a pair of boots and a guitar and I'd be fine as frog hair.<br />
Now I fear that I could very well end up helpless and impoverished and a burden on those I love. An unthinkable and terrifying notion prior to diagnosis, but one that appears more realistic by the day. <br />
I'm not sure if I'll be able to fully articulate this next bit. As I've become less able to handle simple tasks, I've had to rely on assistance more and more. This can be as simple as having to ask for help in moving a piece of furniture, but it diminishes you a little each time it happens. Imagine approaching something as simple a removing the oil cap from your engine and discovering that because of it's angle and location you can't generate the fairly modest amount of torque needed to get it done. Your engine needs a quart. It's a simple, every day procedure that shouldn't require even a seconds thought, but it's beyond your ability. For a man this is especially maddening. Strength is part and parcel to manliness, and to standby passively while others take up your slack is galling. Galling, too, is watching the weeds grow high, the paint peel, or the light bulb go unchanged. Men take care of business. It's what we do. But less so for me now, and this makes me less. Or, more precisely, makes me perceive myself as less. It's the threat that this disability might someday become <i>total</i> that keeps me awake at night.<br />
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That's the downside, here's the up: It could have been much worse. Though it's not pretty, I'm still walking and able to go to work every day. And while my uncertain future scares me, I'll be the first to admit that I've not had it that bad. I could have had something that would kill me young, or have spent my life in a wheelchair. As it is I've climbed mountains, loved women, swam rivers, danced (like a white guy, sadly), ran, played, built things, surmounted obstacles, fathered children, and enjoyed life. Far better people have had worse things happen to them. I'm happy to say that the same has been true for my cousin. He's a minister in North Carolina with two children. Like me he's still upright (physically <i>and </i>morally!), and living his life. <br />
So my challenge now is to find a way to adjust my view of the world to accommodate what's happening to me. A new vision, I guess, of who and am what what my role is within my family and the world at large. I need to adopt an attitude of thankfulness for the richness of my past life. And I need to chart a course that will allow me to use my intact abilities to the fullest effect. As a wise man once said, "you have to go with your gifts."<br />
(12/5/2010 Authors Update: I've found that way. More on that later...)Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-75315890858883044452010-06-21T21:45:00.003-04:002011-05-24T22:20:36.765-04:00The Bobsie Bums and the Appalachian Trail - The Naked Truth About Old Friends and Thru Hiking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="border: currentColor;">This weekend I had the pleasure to visit with two of my old thru-hiking buddies from the eighties - Bruce and Melanie Thomson - trail name The Bobsie Bums. We hadn't seen each other in nearly 20 years, and the weekend was full of great rememberances, reading of old letter, etc. </div>I brought along my digital audio recorder to do a little interview with them about their thru-hiking experiences on the Appalachian Trail as well as the Pacific Crest Trail. I haven't gotten everything spiffed up for an official podcast yet, but I'm going to provide the links below to the two segments for now. Expect this post to be much more fleshed out in the near future - Your Humble Blogger<br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: blue;"><a href="http://saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-24T18_06_38-07_00">Bobsie Bums Part 1</a></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: blue;">Bo<a href="http://saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-24T18_36_25-07_00">bsie Bums Part 2</a></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="border: currentColor; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTQn9MIacbxjfuD8wRGLeyMHbAH6_zjH0rTYQojEspGzQUTbeF4Ziii0CQHZfkqJwDHyP1PnSD-DnWh4IIacApAIPAYxebUMjvzLGRs6YiLY8nV2H23N_-3YSkW6CoLDMU7LSfKfSi29Q/s1600/Peaks+of+Otter+camping+trip+June+2010+012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="427" ru="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTQn9MIacbxjfuD8wRGLeyMHbAH6_zjH0rTYQojEspGzQUTbeF4Ziii0CQHZfkqJwDHyP1PnSD-DnWh4IIacApAIPAYxebUMjvzLGRs6YiLY8nV2H23N_-3YSkW6CoLDMU7LSfKfSi29Q/s640/Peaks+of+Otter+camping+trip+June+2010+012.JPG" width="640" /></a></div></div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-26246552835336319412010-06-01T17:54:00.005-04:002010-06-02T11:54:16.597-04:00Boise, Not "Boyzie"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIW6rdp4NZgW0vqXCPtEzsGV7ej0ftTU1pEq1R-rDYFN-d-prpiUIsj1J1dzVbIHmqcAqkhUe6uHaaSObj2tTKAQn06hxnBfJABF9iF3QQy4nh0dY9DdyheWWCbkACrPJbTyebjovdkE/s1600/DSC02496.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIW6rdp4NZgW0vqXCPtEzsGV7ej0ftTU1pEq1R-rDYFN-d-prpiUIsj1J1dzVbIHmqcAqkhUe6uHaaSObj2tTKAQn06hxnBfJABF9iF3QQy4nh0dY9DdyheWWCbkACrPJbTyebjovdkE/s320/DSC02496.JPG" /></a><span style="color: blue;">Your Humble Blogger is far from the only musical </span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: blue;">member of his family - and certainly not the most unique. Here's a nice podcast interview</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: blue;">with my bagpiping cousin, Brent</span></div><br />
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I never knew my cousin Brent had any musical aspirations, but a few years ago I arrived at his mom's home in Holden Beach, North Carolina for his wedding to find that he'd learned the bagpipes and was pretty honkin' good at them. Our adult lives had taken both of us far from our native North Carolilna - me to Georgia, he to Idaho - and I hadn't kept up with him very closely for several years. Certainly long enough for him to have taken up the pipes.<br />
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That weekend he was married in a full dress kilt - in the proper family tartan of course - with another piper in attendance (Brent piped his family to the site of the service, the other guy piped his bride and her family down) in what was one of the most memorable weddings I've ever witnessed.<br />
Then last year my Mom died, and Brent was there with the pipes for her funeral. I can assure you that Mom would have <em>loved </em>it. As we arrived at the cemetary the sound of the pipes stirred up some stong emotions.<br />
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Fact is, Brent and I are related through the family of our mothers - The McLaurins. Our ancestors first immigrated to the United States in the late eighteen century and settled in the Carolina piedmont just above the fall line on a farm near Wadesboro. And there's always been a strong affinity for our shared Scottish heritage among that family. <br />
This past weekend (May 29, 2010) I had a chance to sit down with Brent in Holden Beach and record his thoughts on piping and wearing the kilt for a podcast. I also recorded a couple of good mp3 files. All of this can be found below. <br />
Thanks, Brent, for the tunes!<br />
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<a href="http://www.saltcreekgazette.com/Brent%20Pipes%204.mp3">www.saltcreekgazette.com/Brent%20Pipes%204.mp3</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.saltcreekgazette.com/Brent%20Pipes%205.mp3">www.saltcreekgazette.com/Brent%20Pipes%205.mp3</a><br />
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And here's the podcast! <br />
<a href="http://saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-06-01T14_48_59-07_00">http://saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-06-01T14_48_59-07_00</a><br />
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I've written a good deal on this blog on music and instruments that influenced me as a fledgling player. Now I'm down to bedrock.<br />
The very first guitarist I ever heard live was my Uncle Jon, and I remember being wowed by the experience. I guess I'd heard plenty of pianos played, so those had little effect on me. But there was just something riviting about the guitar. Those were the days of the 60s folk movement, and I loved hearing Jon rip through versions of Sonny, Frankie and Johnie, or Stagger Lee. I knew then that I wanted to be a guitar player. I <em>had</em> to learn to do this! (Years later my first guitar was a hand-me-down folk guitar Jon had selected for my Dad to buy for my sister.)<br />
The guitar he was playing was pretty special. It was a hand made nylon stringed Mexican guitar that he'd bought from a physican who'd picked it up on vaction in Mexico City. Built by Herminio Salinas e Hijos of Mexico City in 1962 , it was always a huge treat for me to get to play after I began to build some chops.<br />
Well, he still has the guitar, and recently he did a little internet research and came up with a bit of information on the builder. Senor Salinas built guitars in Mexico City from 1900 until his death in 1968. His son Mario took up the profession upon his fathers death and continued in business until he died in 1996. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> I had the opportunity recently to visit Uncle Jon and take a few shots of the old guitar. It's quite the mello instrument after 48 yrs of aging. I'll be trying to research this maker and bring more information as I get it. In the meantime here are a few photos. If any reader should stumble upon this post with additional info, please feel free to email me or comment. Gracias! Adios, mis amigos!<br />
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(here are a couple of video embeds before the pics. First is Your Humble Blogger, the second is Jon himself.)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">lovin' it!</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAZCvhvNYVl8ObWsCc8MLYF-5JFYekrhgCluJNNlgg2ygh0ujXEQ9Nn0KNsXPRFUOA8CT3uCLmH1VFlyt_TwMeb2_tIJIlI43owD6cG8DJtToonzgTspcyJ2XePHC0KBDymlfssd2URCE/s1600/30666_1313756879645_1102357079_30761694_5738407_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" qu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAZCvhvNYVl8ObWsCc8MLYF-5JFYekrhgCluJNNlgg2ygh0ujXEQ9Nn0KNsXPRFUOA8CT3uCLmH1VFlyt_TwMeb2_tIJIlI43owD6cG8DJtToonzgTspcyJ2XePHC0KBDymlfssd2URCE/s320/30666_1313756879645_1102357079_30761694_5738407_n.jpg" /></a></div><a name='more'></a></div></div><div style="border: medium none;"></div><span style="font-size: large;">The Kid<span style="background-color: blue;"></span></span> <br />
Tucked in among the board games, books, record player, and model cars in Reece Hirsch's bedroom was one exotic item I'd never seen in any other kid's room - a typewriter. In that pre-computer age, the QWERTY keyboard was as alien to most people as Sanskrit, and a typewriter was as out of place in a kids room as a bulldozer. But even at ten Reece knew he wanted to be a writer. So always in his room where we'd hang out playing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratego">Stratego</a> or listening to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynYMJwEPH8">George Harrison 45s</a> was a neat-as-a-pin student desk bearing the small Smith/Corona on which Reece would begin to hone his craft.<br />
I was fortunate enough to have Reece move in next door to me in our Kannapolis, North Carolina neighborhood when we were both ten years old. It's always great to have a next door neighbor your age, and soon we were buddies passing our pre-adolescent days tooling around on our bikes, or playing <a href="http://20prospect.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/tudor613.jpg">electric football</a>, or actual football, or any of a million other diversions. Life is pretty great when you're ten.<br />
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That Reece was different from the rest of us was immediately obvious. He was scary smart and very self-possessed - especially in contrast to most of the cretins who populated our little corner of Suburbia. He just didn't seem to be driven by the same childish passions and petty feuds that ruled over the other boys (your humble blogger included). He was a nice guy who didn't leave me with a single negative memory. Much to the contrary, I have tons of great memories of hanging out with Reece and also the many times his fantastically nice parents graciously invited me along on outings. (I caught my first big fish at Lake Norman while fishing with Reece and his family.)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6bYoTNrMU23gLaXjV7rgzZTV71Njh-SNZfOdiSErSr9drjrazPHL5mM8wnWfzX9YC9IM0zyhyknc6WDsM8UiMTW0gqtYf7gQcQ6z1XF8gDw5zVYX30zIkWjALy9ciypHYhBXud3_JgD0/s1600/reece7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6bYoTNrMU23gLaXjV7rgzZTV71Njh-SNZfOdiSErSr9drjrazPHL5mM8wnWfzX9YC9IM0zyhyknc6WDsM8UiMTW0gqtYf7gQcQ6z1XF8gDw5zVYX30zIkWjALy9ciypHYhBXud3_JgD0/s320/reece7.jpg" wt="true" /></a></div> So things were good for a while, and then a year or so later his Dad's company transferred them to some far off town and the next occupants of his house only had girls (blech!). It seems like we may have traded a couple of letters but then we lost touch. Nevertheless, he'd made an impression on me, and I never forgot the tall kid next door or his dream of being an author. So as the decades passed I looked from time to time for his name in library card catalogs and book stores . I never found him in either. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Man</span><br />
Enter the World Wide Web. The with the internet came the possibility of finding friends fairly easily. Just type a name into Google and you very well might reconnect with faces from your past. In this fashion I've successfully tracked down various childhood friends, college buddies, or old work mates, and it's always a thrill when it happens. It was about a year and a half ago that I found Reece again while running random names through the Google hopper. <br />
He turned up, fittingly enough, on a writers forum - <a href="http://crimespace.ning.com/">CrimeSpace</a> - and as soon as I saw his profile photo I knew I had the right guy. The face there was simply a mature version of the ten year old I'd known. So I wasted no time in contacting him, and soon were were exchanging emails. Another tile from the mosaic of my past replaced..<br />
Reece earned a journalism degree from Northwestern in the early eighties and worked in that field for a few years before shifting gears and pursuing a J.D. from the University of Southern California. He's practiced corporate law in San Francisco since the early 1990s. And, as I learned from his CrimeSpace profile when I first caught up to him, he happened to have his first novel due to be published a little over a year later. He'd always planned to write even after embarking on his legal career, Reece told one interviewer, but it took a bit longer than he'd planned to publish his first work. Well, that year and a half has now passed and, to my delight, his novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Insider-Reece-Hirsch/dp/0425234622?ie=UTF8&tag=hughmcleanowens&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Insider</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=hughmcleanowens&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0425234622" style="border: medium none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px ! important;" width="1" />, was published just a couple of weeks ago. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> I've gotten just the biggest kick out of this. I heartily cheer the success of anyone I regard as a friend, and this is quite a success. But to have been a witness to the writer's early aspirations and then by sheer coincidence be around to see the dream become reality is especially gratifying. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> I wrote him with my congratulations after the publication and he wrote back: "No matter how many books I ultimately sell, this is going to be one of the best experiences of my life. It's always nice when you know you're having one of those times, and don't have to figure it out in retrospect." How many times in our lives do we get to make a statement like that? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjcB0FwGTcAIdWqlvEL9SfSz5T8Lru2CbJpBH8lbXhHU8BO-LmodI0wxh8bJbgWbiJYeOwjLM2iY5N6PUreR3-rs1FSbSOT2XwO9IkXnEMAgRRYey5cWEEwF-JtVbe1GdFzacPGWv9SWI/s1600/insider-225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjcB0FwGTcAIdWqlvEL9SfSz5T8Lru2CbJpBH8lbXhHU8BO-LmodI0wxh8bJbgWbiJYeOwjLM2iY5N6PUreR3-rs1FSbSOT2XwO9IkXnEMAgRRYey5cWEEwF-JtVbe1GdFzacPGWv9SWI/s200/insider-225.jpg" width="118" wt="true" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;">The Novel </span> </div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div> After that set up you'd probably suspect that my review of The Insider would be biased and glowing. But I can say with complete sincerity,my acquaintance with the author aside, that this is a great, great book. The story follows corporate attorney Will Connelly as he unwittingly becomes ensnared with the San Francisco Homicide Division, the Russian Mafia, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of Justice and then struggles to extricate himself without ending up in prison or a body bag or both. <br />
The tension builds gradually (well, as gradually as it could with an associate at the firm plummeting to his death within the first five pages!), and I soon found myself carried along with the accelerating momentum and reading compulsively into the early morning hours. And, best of all, I was constantly surprised! I was unable to predict a single plot twist - the hallmark of a good story for this reader. Indeed, I was constantly howling with delight as I was pulled in each new, unexpected direction. Approaching the novels climax I was scarcely able to savor one surprise before Reece was tapping me on the other shoulder with the next. I loved it. <br />
I'm not literary critic (No! I will <i>not </i>say "I don't know a lot about literature, but I know what I like."), but The Insider was easily as good as any crime thriller I've read, and head and shoulders nearly all. Far from being mere "mind candy" as can be said of so many crime stories, The Insider is rare, red meat. I fully expect this to be a big seller and the first of many, many great works from Reece. <br />
So, Reece, Buddy, I'm just as happy for you as could be. This is richly deserved success. And I now eagerly await your next!<br />
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You can check out THE INSIDER at Reece's site: <a href="http://www.reecehirsch.com/">http://www.reecehirsch.com/</a><br />
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(The photos above were taken by me about 1971. Sorry about the poor quality, but these very well may have been from the first roll of film I ever shot. The camera was a very old Kodak Brownie my Dad gave me.)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>UPDATE November 2010 </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Reece gave me a nice shout-out in an essay he recently published in California Lawyer. <a href="http://www.callawyer.com/story.cfm?eid=911395&evid=1">Check it out!</a></span></b></span> <br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=hughmcleanowens&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0425234622&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;">&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=hughmcleanowens&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0425234622&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;">&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</iframe>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-3049516501239868062010-04-13T15:03:00.043-04:002019-08-12T23:42:12.709-04:00Grandma Kay Wood - A Life Well Lived<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I was a just shy of 28 and she was just shy of 70 the day I had to hike like the Devil to beat Kay Wood into camp. "Grandma Kay," as she was known to her trail family, was in the early days of her 1988 Appalchian Trail "thru hike," and while the trail was taking every bit of physical energy my out of shape bones could bring to it, Kay was meeting the challenge with grace and ease. That morning as we all set out from camp I knew that Kay and I would be aiming for the same shelter that night. When, during that days hike, I'd stop for lunch or whatever, Kay would catch up to me. "Dang," thought I,"I can't let a grandma out hike me!" So I would saddle up and turn on what little reserve I had left to again take the lead. I was crowing to the other hikers as I approached Cable Gap Shelter that evening that I'd bested Kay! Which was my joking way of paying homage to a grandma who could give a twenty-something a run for his money - beer gut notwithstanding! Thing was, Kay was never aware of any race. She was just out for a nice walk. Before I had even eaten my first handful of raisins she walked into camp.<br />
Kay was a marvel to all who met her that year, and I count myself as lucky indeed to have made her acquaintance. Here are a few of my personal memories of sharing the trail with this true to God AT luminary.<br />
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The Appalachain Trail is a 2179 mile foot path stretching along the spine of the Appalachian chain from Springer Mountain here in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Founded in the 1930s, the AT has become the crown jewel of America's hiking trails, and each year a few hundred hikers will attempt to hike the entire length in one season. Indeed, an end to end "thru hike" of the AT has become a bucket list item for thousands of hikers, and a photo from atop Katahdin after a months long oddysey is at once a point of eternal pride and proof postive of a hiker's backcountry bona fides.<br />
Though those hopeful hundreds will travel to Georgia's Amicalola State Park to start the hike each Spring, few will possess that happy combination of focus and fitness required to go the distance. The attrition rate is pretty high in the early going. But those who stick it out and who choose the typical south to north route will find themselves denizens of a sort of moving village as they head north. They'll meet fellow villagers who'll become friends for life. They'll pick up cool trail nicknames like Blue Moon, The Mad Norwegian, Hot Buns, Captain Moonpie, and Wingfoot. They'll devour every calorie they can lay their hands on and still lose weight. (it's impossible to carry as many calories as you'll expend) They'll feast their eyes on a thousand vistas not available to those whizzing along in the cushy, climate controled comfort of their cars. They'll come to a new understanding of the word "essiential" as they jettison excess gear <span style="color: blue;">*</span>, food, flab, and bad habits along the way. They'll harden their muscles and clear their minds. And they'll have an experience of which most only ever dream and more cool stories than they could tell in 1001 nights.<br />
<span style="color: blue; font-size: x-small;">*such as ponytail ribbons, eyelash curlers, and an inflatable sink. you know who you are!</span><br />
None of this could happen, though, without the efforts of the thousands who volunteer their time and sweat to maintain the trail. With trees forever being blown down and erosion from rain and thousands of boots, the trail requires constant maintenance. That means that someone has has lug chainsaws, rakes, shovels, and all manner of "impliments of destruction" deep into the woods to do the work. If you've ever walked so much as a single section of the AT you have those unsung heros to thank. (And if you'd like to show your thanks in a more tangable manner, I'm sure <a href="http://www.appalachiantrail.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=mqLTIYOwGlF&b=5703283&ct=8036823">these folks</a> would be happy to hear from you!)<br />
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As a lifelong hiker and nature lover Kay became became involved with the Berkshire chapter of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy back in the 1960s. So involved was she, in fact, that a shelter was named in her honor along the section of the trail just south of her home in Dalton, Massachusetts.<br />
When she was raising her children, the trail literally ran through Kay's backyard, and more than one of those early thru hikers found themselves enjoying her hospitality. Even legendary <a href="http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2007/05/emma-gatewood-67-walks-appalachian.html">Granny Gatewood</a>, known to any AT enthusiast as one of the first end to enders, a feat which she accomplished in her late 60s, was served a cool drink as she rested her sneaker clad feet in Kay's shade. <br />
Then, with her dues paid in advance, it was finally Kay's turn. In the Spring of 1988, on a morning when many people her age were settling into their easy chairs to watch Matlock, Kay climbed Springer Mountain, faced north, and set out for New England. Alone. A few days later I had the pleasure of meeting her. <br />
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My own experience with an AT thru hike began when I found myself losing focus as a student at the University of Georgia. In danger of foundering academically, I felt that I should take a little break to reorder my priorities. I was free from responsibility, still young and reasonably fit, and as a thru hike had always been on my to-do list, it seemed to be the perfect time. I could have my adventure and come back to school the following fall recharged and with a newly charted course. I decided to go for it, and after working a temporary gig for a few months to bank the cash I, too, was on my way north that Spring. <br />
Now, thru hikers represent every possible level of fitness, experience, and hiking style. You'll find everyone from the super fit, gung-ho packers who begin the hike with 20+ mile days, the out of shape strollers who take a decidedly casual approach to daily milage, and every shade of grey in-between. As a result of this hikers will evenutally be hiking more or less as a group with those of a similar fitness/style/experience level, and will usually find themselves in familiar company at the end of the day. <br />
And so it was that your humble and rotund blogger, being closer to the causal mileage end of the hiker spectrum, had the great good fortune to fall in with some very agreeable "familiar company." On North Carolina's Wayah Bald I happened one day upon Bruce and Melanie Thomson, a young couple of thru hikers from Maryland with whom I immediately hit it off. Later that evening we all wound up at the Siler Bald shelter (not to be confused the Siler's Bald shelter in the GSNP), and it was there that I met Kay. She'd been moving along at the same rate as Bruce and Melanie for a few days and they were already fast friends. <br />
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Grandma Kay with Bruce and Melanie Thomson - The Bobsie Bums</div>
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Personally I was wowed by Kay. The contrast between she and nearly every other septaugenarian I'd ever known was stark. Few of the ladies that age that I'd met had ever spent so much as a single night outdoors. And certainly none would ever consider walking, <em>walking</em> mind you, 2100 miles. In the woods. With no <em>toilet</em>! Perish the thought! But there was Kay on her way to Maine. If she was in possession of this kind of mojo at 70, what was she like at 20? She was the living embodiment of Yankee grit. Quiet grace personified. And I was deeply impressed on my first introduction to this remarkable lady. <br />
I was equally taken with Bruce and Melanie. They were from Aberdeen, Maryland, and two more archetypal "All American Kids" couldn't be imagined. They'd have been great spokepersons for milk. I can't stress their wholesomeness too strongly. I never actually heard them use the words, "gee", "nifty", or "swell", but I know they must have, i.e.: "Gee Hon, those powdered eggs you whipped up for breakfast were swell!. And isn't that new campstove nifty?"<br />
Most hikers take on a gritty mien after a few days on the trail, but these two somehow always seemed to look...um...spiffy. Upon re-entering civilization at the small towns and communities that come every few days a typical hiker might be seen breezing around in his or her rain suit while every stitch of other clothing was thrown into the washer at the local laundromat. But not these two. When they hit town, out came the ziplock bags with plaid button-downs, khaki shorts, and Weejuns! Honest to God! The rest of us looked like bedraggled hobos in Gore Tex, but The Bums blended in perfectly with the yuppie couples who were up from the city for a weekend mountain getaway. The Scotch Guard, to use Melanie's metaphor, would eventually wear off, but that would be a few hundred miles further on. In any case, they were awesomely awesome, and when time came to stick them with a trail name "The Bobsie Twins" was briefly considered before being dropped for "Bobsie Bums." <br />
So for most of the brief balance of my hike I enjoyed the nightly company of Grand Ma Kay and the Bums - and very good company that was with tons and tons of laughs. One chilly moring at the approriately named Cold Gap Shelter we were all reluctant to get out of bed, so I whipped out my blues harp and serenaded the group with an extemporaneous "Sleeping Bag Blues" to great acclaim. Those were some good times.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Cold Gap Shelter. Bruce, Kay, and Your Humble Blogger. Melanie's Caption: Morning of April 28th. Nobody wanted to get up that morning!! You played your "Sleeping Bag Blues" on the harmonica. Bruce retrieved everybody's food bags and we all ate "breakfast in bed", waiting for it to warm up.</b></span></i></div>
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Sadly, I wouldn't finish that trail that year or ever. There's a shelter on TVA property at Fontana Lake that was, in 1988 at least, the nicest shelter on the entire trail - The Fontana Hilton. This was a nicely designed affair that could easily sleep 30 people, hence the name. Just up the paved path from the shelter is a parking area complete with sandwich bearing tourists happy to share with hungry hikers, and another couple of hundred yards down the hill is Fontana Dam. Cross the dam and you're in the Great Smokies National Park. A couple of miles down the hill is Fontana Village, a perfect stop over point with it's post office, laundomat, shops and restaurant. <br />
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The Fontana Hilton </div>
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We'd been forced into a lay over by a forest fire in the park that threatened the AT, so when we finally did get the "all clear" from the Park Service there was a pretty good backlog of hikers - including Kay, The Bums, and me. But I was lazy that morning and decided to stay in bed for a bit. I bid the crew goodbye with assuances that I'd catch up to them on down the trail, and they were gone. <br />
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A couple hours later I was climbing down from the upper sleeping loft when I missed the little step and fell three feet busting my ankle in the process. It was obvious that I wouldn't be hiking on that foot for a while. So I hobbled over the hill to the dam and used the pay phone (no cellular in those days!) to call my girlfriend to rescue me. Since I was only a couple of hundred miles from home, in a few hours I was being borne away a highway speeds. </div>
A more determined hiker would have gotten back on the trail after a period of healing, but there was this sweet, pretty girlfriend you see, and....well... I think you see where this is going. I didn't go back.<br />
Meanwhile Kay and The Bums made steady northward progress. The AT grapevine informed them of my fall sometime later, and I had to wait a few months before I got a letter from them recounting their journey. <br />
Kay's '88 hike was interrupted by a nasty fall in Pennsylvania. Not to be deterred, however, she was back in '89 to complete her walk. She got her Katahdin photo.<br />
The Bums later decided to mix things up a bit. They did a little section jumping later on and ended the '88 season with 1500 miles under thier boots. The next year they completed all of the AT but the Presidential Range in the White Mountains. (Just fifty miles left, y'all. Get on it!)<br />
By that time their transformation from yuppie puppies to full fledged hikin' hippies was complete. A year later they did a complete thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail - the west coast answer to the AT. But even that wasn't enough to satisify their wilderness wanderlust and a year after that they moved to a cabin in Delta Juntcion, Alaska and had a baby - Forrest.<br />
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Through my own damnable tendency to neglect correspondence when I get caught up in the life, I lost contact with The Bums sometime after that. But last week I got an email from them. They're back in the lower 48 and living in Pennsylvania. They kept up with Kay over the years, and were always amazed that she just kept going and going and going. They'd get a letter from her detailing what she'd hauled up the trail for this or that project and would do a quick calculation of Kay's <br />
age at that time. Always amazing. <br />
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Bruce, Melanie, and Forrest Thomson with Kay at her 90th birtday party.</div>
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The year before last they drove up to Massachusetts for her surprise 90th birthday party. Then came the news in February of this year that she'd died. She suffered a fall at home and never recovered. She was 91.<br />
It's always sad to lose a friend, but the quality of Kay's experience was such that we should all cheer her well lived life. If any of us can realize a fraction of a sliver of the pure living that Kay had we'll be doing well indeed. To you, Kay, I say well done! Well done.<br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A Few more photos. The captions are from Melanie - 50% of The Bobsie Bums </span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDyEl-Gdd-hIOFdHyHo9UhB-5OWnhpcNWAC33qx3FbFCHD04bcOlScvKBTf31oAPMbZ-2J1dGyG7aOOpZaDlF4RdFO4PEyWDiO27xYWluJSFJ0d7AnMr_g6V4Eyl54lv5d2aTVjd-vw7I/s1600/Grandma_Kay_88.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">Kay Journaling at Deep Gap Shelter</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">Kim "census taker" and Jim "Capt. Moon Pie". This was one day north of Hot Springs, NC. on May 13, 1988 Grandma Kay's <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1271194479_1" style="background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; border-bottom: medium none;">70th birthday</span>. Earlier in the day, we left Kay in Hot Springs where she was responding to over 40 letters and cards she had received for her birthday. Bruce, Kim, Jim and I had left Kay left the balloon and moon pie with <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1271194479_2" style="background: rgb(220 , 238 , 255); border-bottom: rgb(0 , 102 , 204) 1px dashed; color: black;">birthday greetings</span> tied on a tree waiting for her. She actually found it the next day, which I found to be quite a miracle considering how may voracious hikers were on that trail!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">(Says Your Humble Blogger: Melanie looks about sixteen here! Also, great photography by Bruce. Note how he artfully cuts off feet!) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">Walnut Mtn. Shelter, just south of Hot Springs. Grandma Kay being fed chili by "weekenders" Dave, Bill and Kim. This day was a thru-hiker's fantasy--Dave, Bill and Kim were out for a few days on the trail, but found they were carrying too much food so they spent the day cooking over a fire to feed anybody who came along. Lucky Grandma Kay and the Bums came along to lighten their load. It was the first and only time I saw someone make <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1271194479_3" style="background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; border-bottom: medium none;">pineapple upside down cake</span> on an open fire.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;"> </span>1989 Tumbling Run Shelter, PA. Bruce and I surprised Kay by arriving early in the morning and making her breakfast. Later, Bruce took her backpack in the car and he planned to meet us farther up the trail. Kay and I slack packed that day. As I tried to keep up with Kay, I marveled at her speed and her massive muscular calves. Okay, truth be told, I was envious of Grandma Kay's shapely muscular legs! I wanted those legs<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;">Tumbling Run Shelter. Bruce making Kay blueberry pancakes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;"> Tumbling Run Shelter. Kay enjoying the blueberry pancakes.</span><br />
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Your Humble Blogger and Melanie at Wesser, N.C. (That's Bruce and the Nantahala Outdoor Center reflected in the window. Late observation: I just noticed they're wearing matching sweaters!)</div>
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Your Humble, Rotund Blogger at the "southern terminus", Springer Mountain</div>
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Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-81759039462530421232010-03-23T13:37:00.033-04:002010-07-13T09:46:58.520-04:00Ol' Hoss - Home To Stay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><strong><span style="font-size: large;"> Doc Watson's Gallagher G50 Comes Home</span></strong><br />
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</div><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">( I promise this is my last blog post referencing either Doc Watson or NGDB's Will The Circle Be Unbroken. At least for a while.)</span></em><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Steve Gallagher, the youngest of the Gallagher family luthiers, held the old guitar up for my inspection. With a nicely yellowed spruce top, mahogany back and sides, and rosewood bridge and fingerboard, it sported no ornamentation other than an inlaid pearl “G” and binding on the head stock. It was far from being in pristine condition. Indeed, this guitar had obviously seen a lot of hard miles. And after the parade of elaborately appointed instruments Steve showed me that morning at the <a href="http://gallagherguitar.com/">Gallagher Guitar Company in Wartrace, Tennessee</a> it certainly wasn’t eye popping. Yet, this guitar possessed more mojo than every other in the shop combined. This was Doc’s guitar - the 1968 Gallagher G50 played by master picker Doc Watson during some of his most prolific years in the late sixties and early seventies. And this was the guitar I'd come to Wartrace to see that day.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgah9rX-4m_7v-UVFubkkfneJIQjY4azYpQO0iQOiRp0-lKMWLAsFdf9L5PaYdRXXl6YbDSVL0eWivMRUBlsLoMvfC_pHz1kLaNDPw_nk32C6XIztbkIla3dhiFwAN6_HN_pMmnKknR4ik/s1600/Hoss+Headstock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgah9rX-4m_7v-UVFubkkfneJIQjY4azYpQO0iQOiRp0-lKMWLAsFdf9L5PaYdRXXl6YbDSVL0eWivMRUBlsLoMvfC_pHz1kLaNDPw_nk32C6XIztbkIla3dhiFwAN6_HN_pMmnKknR4ik/s400/Hoss+Headstock.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> The story of how Doc came into possession of this guitar that he dubbed “Ol Hoss” goes like this: In 1968 company founder J. W. Gallagher accompanied by his then 17 year old son Don (Steve's Grandfather and Dad respectively) approached Doc at a festival and asked him try out a couple of instruments. Doc tried out both, but preferred the mahogany G50 over the rosewood G70. A gentlemen’s agreement was struck and J.W. left the guitar in Doc’s hands for as long as he wanted to play it. Play it, he did. For six years between 1968 and 1974 this guitar accompanied Doc on the road and in the studio including a session at Woodland Studios in Nashville that, through a remarkable stoke of luck, would prove to be a huge boon for the Gallaghers.<br />
In 1971 the popular, California based Nitty Gritty Dirt Band brought together many of the old time greats from the forties, fifties, and sixties such as Mabel Carter, Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, and Doc Watson to record an album of pure country music that was destined to become a classic - Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Known more causally as the "Circle Album", it quickly went gold, then platinum and would eventually attain legendary status and open an entire generation to traditional music.<br />
Perhaps sensing the historic nature of the project, producer William McEwen decided to include on the album a bit of the musician’s crosstalk captured between takes on an open microphone. Much of this studio chatter was fairly mundane conversation such as Mabel Carter bemoaning the difficulty of changing autoharp strings or how many basses side man Junior Huskey owned. But it was an interesting peek behind the curtain and gave the project a different feel from any album I’d ever heard. One such captured conversation was the first meeting between Doc and finger style guitar master Merle Travis in which Travis spoke about Ol' Hoss:<br />
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Travis: "Man, that guitar, by the way, rings like a bell.”<br />
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Doc: "It's a pretty good ol' box, isn't it? Mr. Gallagher makes these. Lives down in Wartrace, Tennessee - he makes 'em."<br />
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Travis: "Yeah, Grandpa Jones has got one."<br />
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With that exchange, two acknowledged guitar gurus commenting on the sweetness of a Gallagher instrument, The Gallagher Guitar Company became a household name among the millions who would obsessively play this album time and again. And the guitar in question, Ol’ Hoss became an icon. <br />
Later, in 1974 Doc asked the Gallaghers to build him a custom guitar, and once it was delivered, and true to his word, he returned Ol’ Hoss to J.W. Not long afterward it went on loan to the museum at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville where it stayed until 2008 when it again came home to the little shop in Wartrace. <br />
I first got wind of all of this when I visited <a href="http://www.customfret.com/about.php">Custom Fretted Instruments in Sparta, Tennessee</a>. While dropping off a guitar off to be repaired, I tried out a nice looking Gallagher. Owner Jim Grainger explained that this guitar was an exact copy of the original Ol’ Hoss, which was now back in Wartrace, and that CFI asked Steve to build them an exact replica. “He said he’d do it if we ordered three. We ordered six,” Jim explains on the CFI website. It was Ol’ Hoss number six that I tried out at Jim’s shop. <br />
As one of those pickers whose musical direction was drastically altered after exposure to Doc’s cuts on the Circle album, and being well acquainted with the story behind the guitar, I was at once delighted and covetous. And I was quite impressed by its balanced tone. I'm accustomed to a fat necked Martin 12 fret dreadnought which is very mellow, but overly bassy in my opinion. This guitar had no specific sweet spot; the entire fingerboard was its sweet spot. "Those Gallagher's really project," Jim explained and told how he'd been in a jam session attended by Doc in which <em>his</em> Gallagher cut through the banjos and fiddles loud and clear. The guitar’s price was beyond my reach, but I was having fun noodling around on it nevertheless. When I speculated whether the folks at Gallagher would let me see and play the original, Jim told me to give them a visit and “ask for Steve.” So, after a couple of email exchanges and a phone call I found myself a few weeks later in the tiny town of Wartrace looking for the fabled Gallagher shop. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzyFZhzPIUkBSR1YArW3lrx83O5qSFBEEThVwZOpQJXfUG2VzdvlNvtO90QByZQTp3gXm7b4xL1RgGzh7BIFMVIrw-KmiW74l3tiV7y9cpuppF-S-imhgp__nLzRU0ZplCqceBEgE6qFk/s1600-h/076.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzyFZhzPIUkBSR1YArW3lrx83O5qSFBEEThVwZOpQJXfUG2VzdvlNvtO90QByZQTp3gXm7b4xL1RgGzh7BIFMVIrw-KmiW74l3tiV7y9cpuppF-S-imhgp__nLzRU0ZplCqceBEgE6qFk/s320/076.JPG" vt="true" /></a></div>Wartrace <em>is</em> tiny, so you don’t have to look very long to find anything there, but the front for the Gallagher shop is so unprepossessing that I actually missed it on my first pass down the street. There’s just a plain store front and a single red and white sign reading Gallagher Guitar Company - Established 1965. Inside the front door I found a small lobby that might have been that of the cabinet shop that it once was except or the new Gallaghers hanging on the wall and a display case of featuring Gallagher number 1, number 1000, and one of the old Shelby guitars made by Don Gallagher back in the sixties during his brief tenure with that company. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOyfUveaGZe-FWjjo0PlVFT3r0kXxFKPsMlOGrMZD4YGU3BZqyyPzBCUvVAp8I_IdoVEceTuBfO5_6bljyR8snDYag-uYLDqt4U_j_zaLPevNHGigMyvaOZmvzo4hw6dNJzxKOJU_6vDA/s1600-h/028.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOyfUveaGZe-FWjjo0PlVFT3r0kXxFKPsMlOGrMZD4YGU3BZqyyPzBCUvVAp8I_IdoVEceTuBfO5_6bljyR8snDYag-uYLDqt4U_j_zaLPevNHGigMyvaOZmvzo4hw6dNJzxKOJU_6vDA/s320/028.JPG" vt="true" /></a></div><br />
I announced myself to Hazel Gallagher at the front desk, and soon a tall twenty something dressed in jeans, a well traveled Station Inn t-shirt, and green cap emerged to introduce himself. This was Steve Gallagher. Affable and with an easy laugh, in his youthful appearance and demeanor he seemed more like one of my son’s rock band friends than the heir apparent of a venerable guitar company. The kind of guy you'd enjoy having over to watch the game. But once the discussion turned to guitars and luthery his demeanor became that of a serious and knowledgeable businessman.<br />
After graduating with a marketing degree from Tennessee Tech, where he was a walk-on tight end, Steve worked briefly in the corporate world before coming home to begin his apprenticeship in earnest. Six years later he’s still honing his luthiery skills while bringing his marketing background to bear on the business side of the operation. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEuiMWcanmw9qjCrM4WGRs4yP7t3r69PsC9RByIiNQFNVl4ZRvlDkX2B89t25rNzGc0YX_yCpOcnlICRNoqzvB0G_8R7kmaF4ucwG9H0yYkk5jzAPA5KFkjmq60llqXPWB2PksNdAI0_A/s1600/steve_with_dogwood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEuiMWcanmw9qjCrM4WGRs4yP7t3r69PsC9RByIiNQFNVl4ZRvlDkX2B89t25rNzGc0YX_yCpOcnlICRNoqzvB0G_8R7kmaF4ucwG9H0yYkk5jzAPA5KFkjmq60llqXPWB2PksNdAI0_A/s320/steve_with_dogwood.jpg" /></a></div> We began our visit with a tour of the shop which occupies about the same space as an old downtown Western Auto might have before they began to move to the suburbs. J.W. Gallagher had originally run a cabinet shop in this space beginning back in 1939 before taking a job at a guitar factory in nearby Shelbyville in the early sixties. It was there that he learned the ins and outs of basic guitar construction, but the cheapness of the mass produced product didn’t dovetail (pun intended) with his craftsman’s sensibility. So in 1965 he built Gallagher #1 and the Gallagher Guitar Company was born. Forty-five years later some of the original machinery J.W. designed and built is still in use. Steve pointed out a side bender that looked well used but very serviceable. “That’s something that Grandpa built.” <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2lKQRVQJ33Bx8LmKeuZJll9oM_Iv4vM9HNzBKBTgCMi4TVG9eF-nFjN_RdfWi0IWk5u6VZr2KqcUTIatSaK8FSadCLeB3SLFvobgHOx31ZOPgXM57xhljdZScIMUkmFgzOcyTxgrQlho/s1600/006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2lKQRVQJ33Bx8LmKeuZJll9oM_Iv4vM9HNzBKBTgCMi4TVG9eF-nFjN_RdfWi0IWk5u6VZr2KqcUTIatSaK8FSadCLeB3SLFvobgHOx31ZOPgXM57xhljdZScIMUkmFgzOcyTxgrQlho/s320/006.JPG" /></a></div> Indeed, it was J.W. Gallagher’s ingenuity as much as his woodworking skill and high standards that set him on the path to fine instrument making. * “It’s a lot easier to build guitars today than it was then,” Steve explained, “ ‘cause now I can go to <a href="http://www.lmii.com/">LMI</a> and buy a side bender rather than building it myself. If you think about it from that perspective, back in the sixties there was no such thing as <a href="http://www.stewmac.com/?gclid=CKvcxe660aACFUFM5QodqzK20A">Stumak</a> or LMI. The art of building guitars is in building the forms and machinery.” <br />
As he continued to show me around we were soon discussing tone woods, scalloped bracing, neck shaping, inlay and the like. In a small room not much larger than a walk in closet we found a number of completed bodies awaiting necks. Their raw state didn't diminish the beauty of the wood and inlay. "This one's a custom going to Denmark," Steve explained and was soon showing off the beautiful quilted mahogany from another custom drednought "And this is one of our new sloped shoulder dreadnoughts." His tapping on the bare wood produced a deep, rich "thump" and obvious glee from Steve as he explained that "this one we're building for stock. It's gonna make somebody a great guitar. It's gonna be a killer. I know it is" <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDEP2UkKXPIIRGVyLZeO-Nh1hz-PJLSvZJ9dUPnezrG7kUgSi2eeOdWWbdsnmraoq3BvUD_ObVFQkJMJE1yK0lcopvb73Ia8SDeRq_qcjNC3DcjA3JBn-hdeKszHWTGfDboAsaOF4lIGk/s1600-h/009.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDEP2UkKXPIIRGVyLZeO-Nh1hz-PJLSvZJ9dUPnezrG7kUgSi2eeOdWWbdsnmraoq3BvUD_ObVFQkJMJE1yK0lcopvb73Ia8SDeRq_qcjNC3DcjA3JBn-hdeKszHWTGfDboAsaOF4lIGk/s320/009.JPG" vt="true" /></a> </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Finally we found ourselves in another small room lined with racks of guitars either finished or waiting for set up. With obvious pride he showed me one beautiful guitar after another including a nice piece with a beautiful dogwood inlay that his dad Don had recently completed. "Did you catch the hummingbird," he asked? Sure enough there was the most delicate inlaid hummingbird. Then, casual as you please, he brought out an old, battered dreadnought. "This is Ol' Hoss," he said. This was <em>not</em> how I'd envisioned my first encounter with the guitar. I'd imagined a climate controlled vault, a leather clad case being brought forth and gingerly laid before me, and a golden glow illuminating my face as the lid was opened revealing this venerable old guitar. A chorus of angels, etc. But, not so much.</div> Steve fished around in his pocket for a pick, knelt down and began a run of Angeline The Baker, and explained that he'd only been playing for the last four years or so and that he was the first Gallagher to have an interest in doing so. This kind of amazed me. I guess guitar skills and luthiery skills aren't necessary synonomous, but most builders and repair guys I've met have also been pickers. It seems counterintuitive that a person could craft great sounding instruments without being able to appreciate their work first hand. With Steve there's now a Gallagher who can.<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEKPKoO1UHuevYi6FkV5pboE9xF6wS41J-2CmGCSoVJ98t_ws-NKLKRkJPLhnsSpX1phoOqhmM2JkcyPVxK6_oV7RjSzstjXbbU5OVOqGEDGFQUNDgm2bhyphenhyphenhIKU_pOZaLmcrcpib2jDIg/s1600-h/008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEKPKoO1UHuevYi6FkV5pboE9xF6wS41J-2CmGCSoVJ98t_ws-NKLKRkJPLhnsSpX1phoOqhmM2JkcyPVxK6_oV7RjSzstjXbbU5OVOqGEDGFQUNDgm2bhyphenhyphenhIKU_pOZaLmcrcpib2jDIg/s320/008.JPG" vt="true" width="320" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Steve hadn't changed the strings in a while and wanted to get that done, so we took Ol' Hoss back to the set up room for a restring. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjss654i4foR7TVZDAwP_yebSawIvg6ZL0T02AfhjYePddBdKZLOgteP8I_vGmnODun-AH_MAA1tJNMAx2ChVVtFZuTP3BlOk_LkOWqgUvHkb2EW8jsGaeQqTmpVmXpWig9QwkJNcuGrRw/s1600-h/034.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjss654i4foR7TVZDAwP_yebSawIvg6ZL0T02AfhjYePddBdKZLOgteP8I_vGmnODun-AH_MAA1tJNMAx2ChVVtFZuTP3BlOk_LkOWqgUvHkb2EW8jsGaeQqTmpVmXpWig9QwkJNcuGrRw/s320/034.JPG" vt="true" /></a></div> "This thing hasn't been set up since the seventies," Steve told me. "This is how we got it back from the museum. I've only had light gauge strings on it and I'm curious to see what it'll sound like with medium." With the strings off it was obvious that it badly needed frets. There was also a crack showing in the lower bout which Steve snaked his hand inside to inspect. "This needs attention. And we need to do the frets and a good set up. These are just plastic pins. I wanna hot rod it out with some nice bridge pins, saddle, and nut."<br />
About halfway through restringing we were interrupted by the gas man taking Steve out of the room the room for a few minutes to attend to business. This left me alone to more closely inspect the guitar myself and take a few photos. Inside was visible the original label proclaiming that this was G50 serial number 68001 and was signed by J.W.Gallagher himself. "Guaranteed Perfect," it read. It looked more like an instrument that had been in service for sixty years than just the six that Doc had it. The finish was worn off the entire length of the neck, the top and back revealed a galaxy of nicks and scratches, and the pick guard had a deep trough worn from millions (billions?) of pick strokes. All of the shine had long been worn off of the hardware and replaced by the thinnest layer of oxidation. Consider for a moment how long you think it would take you to wear the finish off your own guitar's neck and you get a sense of just how active a picker Doc is. He did this in <em>six</em> years! Amazing. This was truly a case of "if this guitar could talk."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKAkhlvOjfrsxcXKvgZQeAZiEGzcRzUZfJuft9kI-TMeuIZJCc8wMy5OHKMRrRWnnj72a2XRdRFIvTWg4Eaj3eIWrfzlIZKWelhhMdrutT9F_HtcmAOsraNfyhAi3HQgC1jzK5aBqu40E/s1600/037.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline! important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKAkhlvOjfrsxcXKvgZQeAZiEGzcRzUZfJuft9kI-TMeuIZJCc8wMy5OHKMRrRWnnj72a2XRdRFIvTWg4Eaj3eIWrfzlIZKWelhhMdrutT9F_HtcmAOsraNfyhAi3HQgC1jzK5aBqu40E/s320/037.JPG" /></a> Finally the restring was complete. "Wanna play it," Steve asked? "Uhhh, yep!" We moved to the lobby where there were a couple of chairs, and then I was suddenly hitting a G run on the very guitar with which <a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2009/11/you-had-me-at-hello-thar-afternoons.html">Doc had dazzled my teenaged ears so many years before</a>. I was more than a little wowed by the experience. I was hoping that some of the mojo might rub off on me. (If it did, it's certainly slow to kick in!) I tooled around a little trying not to look too much like the amateur I am, and when Steve offered to shoot a little video with my own camera I settled on a nice, safe finger picking thing with no fancy finger work or flourishes. I really, really wanted to do Black Mountain Rag or Down Yonder, but I just couldn't get my nervous fingers to cooperate.<br />
Now, for me it takes a while to warm up, and that day was no exception. And I find playing strange guitars a little awkward at first as well. So, I really wasn't playing my best, but I found the guitar to be very sweet and well balanced, just as I had the replica back at Custom Fretted Instruments. But I have to admit that I was a little let down that I didn't find my fingers flying effortlessly over the frets. On a few occasions I've picked up an instrument at a shop and found myself "in the zone" and unable to hit a wrong note. Not so that day. But despite my own shortcomings as a player it was obviosly a great guitar with remarkable projection and tone. <br />
That said, while I was playing Steve was called away to a phone call, and all alone I was able to unselfconsciously open up on it. For probably fifteen minutes I sat alone in the lobby running through pieces of every fiddle tune and fingerpicking arrangement I could think of. ** And while I never did fully hit my stride I was in hawg heaven cradling this piece of American music history in my hands before I finally, and reluctantly, handed it back to Steve.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgwSQ_DX6OGy0hndcGTwPCFLIuOeCbHqEhkPVq19bdEJ94Ju1IXWjkW-HYYe3pb-BMAT30nim9d2HhyphenhyphenaiRwwbvXqeAG9bMf9aw12ZINk-djIeMtnrcD_YeWCnZYYXU9oY1pYngwZgX_Cw/s1600-h/023.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgwSQ_DX6OGy0hndcGTwPCFLIuOeCbHqEhkPVq19bdEJ94Ju1IXWjkW-HYYe3pb-BMAT30nim9d2HhyphenhyphenaiRwwbvXqeAG9bMf9aw12ZINk-djIeMtnrcD_YeWCnZYYXU9oY1pYngwZgX_Cw/s320/023.JPG" vt="true" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs-5TmoPNrT6pwnM-GVssT1dklqfM8oAGj1Zq_6bLSOLMOCvhpN4U_aotv2mZSyJT2SPYLxuZKeipwj9xCJUHzcDeV2SVY4wDMt6qynn_TgSf4NQphcwsB13jIUfTtXcFDhQhvoDrbuw/s1600-h/055.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs-5TmoPNrT6pwnM-GVssT1dklqfM8oAGj1Zq_6bLSOLMOCvhpN4U_aotv2mZSyJT2SPYLxuZKeipwj9xCJUHzcDeV2SVY4wDMt6qynn_TgSf4NQphcwsB13jIUfTtXcFDhQhvoDrbuw/s320/055.JPG" vt="true" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Your Humble Blogger </div> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgE6fiM5I3cb-vjPwxlNuppzS_tY6HQaiWOyxs_RGtuvDNnmY-oi8QCVPHMdlzPxv-q9aMgINq7sUUmcT3Qwz_p_8H3u2SF6R_Tl_2scIuI2g0ji1167eZaFU9UJnZ8WDAxWY1QhukVM/s1600-h/066.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgE6fiM5I3cb-vjPwxlNuppzS_tY6HQaiWOyxs_RGtuvDNnmY-oi8QCVPHMdlzPxv-q9aMgINq7sUUmcT3Qwz_p_8H3u2SF6R_Tl_2scIuI2g0ji1167eZaFU9UJnZ8WDAxWY1QhukVM/s320/066.JPG" vt="true" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJAKUu9CU-1SXKJ3fX72XSZx_h7evpOCZzG6kOTfaWZbdjeSoLNDWSIcc1FVRma-0XRVq8KrdOqEa75UmCM-MjDtBZqFmuIeLqEuu10uoIX2zdzvm8ghXeo95v9v3rT0_eeWbcgJapvc/s1600-h/074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJAKUu9CU-1SXKJ3fX72XSZx_h7evpOCZzG6kOTfaWZbdjeSoLNDWSIcc1FVRma-0XRVq8KrdOqEa75UmCM-MjDtBZqFmuIeLqEuu10uoIX2zdzvm8ghXeo95v9v3rT0_eeWbcgJapvc/s320/074.JPG" vt="true" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Steve with a Steve Kaufman model cutaway and Ol' Hoss </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">What I took away from this experience is that the guitar, as great an instrument as it is, doesn't possess the magic. That comes from Doc, and a great instrument in his hands is merely a conduit for his incredible talent. I could play Ol' Hoss for the rest of my life and never even distantly approach Doc's sound. Still, the great picker <em>does</em> need the great instrument. And the association between Doc, Steve Kaufman, and many others with Gallaghers has truly enhanced the music they brought us. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> Earlier, while restringing Ol' Hoss, I'd asked Steve what plans the company had for Ol' Hoss. "I'm trying to put together a recording project right now featuring artists playing it." "Any plans to ever send it back to the Country Music Hall of Fame or another museum? " I asked. "No," he firmly replied,” this is home to stay."</div><br />
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<em>* Ingenuity seems to the common denominator among luthiers. </em><a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2010/02/custom-fretted-instruments.html"><em>Read Jim Grainger's account of how he taught himself instrument repair as a teenager.</em></a><br />
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<em>** The nicest compliment I've had in quite a while was when Hazel Gallager, Steve's grandmother, mentioned as she was coming through the lobby that she enjoyed my fingerpicking and that I sounded like "a good musician." Considering the musical wonderment that she's no doubt witnessed in her own living room thats quite something. She was obviously being kind, but I'll take what I can get at this stage!!!</em><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm4XtmQWYPVKNGYB-pn45UOK1OhCv63i35e4y5jXUf62cNcvmdFnP0iq3WZHJAUGE-ECytSB9FWVgFCw6qXQ2BBbPISDRhzjoCEoZ-zlD4QnyGaDzeef5bGkoBz29UfWfRb8w7tCUCsgc/s1600/062.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm4XtmQWYPVKNGYB-pn45UOK1OhCv63i35e4y5jXUf62cNcvmdFnP0iq3WZHJAUGE-ECytSB9FWVgFCw6qXQ2BBbPISDRhzjoCEoZ-zlD4QnyGaDzeef5bGkoBz29UfWfRb8w7tCUCsgc/s400/062.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>Check out the cool inlay on that Danny Carter Signature Model hanging behind Steve<br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipXuCgDMK3AqfLPiYlklWCAO6R1yy9o2npHjK6-An2ikwvGDRua1sTGgBIK-3AWWHBbo5p0DA06TiFsNbFjCXW1Nb-41iC301iH-oXzSfQwsHbIQhAmJSFZrUnmXwnLqh4pyeWaNYWICc/s1600/039.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipXuCgDMK3AqfLPiYlklWCAO6R1yy9o2npHjK6-An2ikwvGDRua1sTGgBIK-3AWWHBbo5p0DA06TiFsNbFjCXW1Nb-41iC301iH-oXzSfQwsHbIQhAmJSFZrUnmXwnLqh4pyeWaNYWICc/s400/039.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">Ol' Hoss getting restrung</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-hR7zaCCcs-KtEmpUp7rwVgFS9qv2crUt1BdaWLOMcFctaK_wrQXXT31TXqz7c5OWgMpceILFqO3YbxE6-r9BS04MTABUQrRpdv9eWFYAV1q7APY_NgMYc8ynNaNqIP8xj10NegH8xY/s1600/Hoss+Headstock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="cssfloat: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" nt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-hR7zaCCcs-KtEmpUp7rwVgFS9qv2crUt1BdaWLOMcFctaK_wrQXXT31TXqz7c5OWgMpceILFqO3YbxE6-r9BS04MTABUQrRpdv9eWFYAV1q7APY_NgMYc8ynNaNqIP8xj10NegH8xY/s400/Hoss+Headstock.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">Headstock Detail</div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-13009937298369004122010-03-10T14:24:00.007-05:002010-03-19T22:01:00.784-04:00Happy Birthday Norman Blake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnvOrQoq0lShaDLsQwRBghX-JOeBl3QetRrAXqP6bmG1X8P94wfBdWMfoR_-YzKmoBf5SLYBLBOT6c0KMFa3V2yUU8axCZQSnL5-EAdn-3X9jyloZevc9qEkW_kWC69PoeUoc_3rW7tLM/s1600-h/HMC+stuff+088.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnvOrQoq0lShaDLsQwRBghX-JOeBl3QetRrAXqP6bmG1X8P94wfBdWMfoR_-YzKmoBf5SLYBLBOT6c0KMFa3V2yUU8axCZQSnL5-EAdn-3X9jyloZevc9qEkW_kWC69PoeUoc_3rW7tLM/s320/HMC+stuff+088.jpg" vt="true" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: blue;">Today is Norman Blake's birthday, which is not hard for me to remember since it's also my son's. In any case, I thought I'd seize the occasion to pay homage to this incredible musician and relate some of my personal experiences.</span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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Much like my experience with hearing Doc for the first time, I vividly remember my first brush with Norman's music. I was nineteen and walked into a friend's living room to find the album Whiskey Before Breakfast playing on his high end stereo. Seems like the cut was Arkansas Traveler, and hearing it was like crack cocaine to me. One dose and I was hooked.<br />
The simplicity of the production merely enhanced the complexity of Norman's style. All of the cuts are either solo Norman or accompanied by one rhythm guitar (presumably Norman dubbed). This picking was just clean and powerful. And 100% authentic. <br />
In no time I had my own copy of "Whiskey" and Fields of November as well. And, as with Doc, I've spent the thirty years since trying to figure out and emulate his style. A hopeless task, I'll admit. <br />
Over the years I've had the opportunity to see Norman perform, and I've never been disappointed. But, be warned, if you're looking for acoustic fireworks these days you won't find it at one of his concerts. He's left behind the slick picking days to concentrate on style. "We're not here to burn it up," he told the audience at The Market Street Performance Hall in Chattanooga back in the 90s when I saw him there. <br />
As a solo artist, Norman has always been one of the most traditional and authentic of players. The very selection of his songs prove that. Many of the tunes Norman fans now know as old, familiar friends would most likely have been lost to history had he not resurrected them on vinyl. And as he's matured he seems to have ventured to become ever more authentically old time. Listen to cuts from his most recent albums and it's easy to imagine them being played in some parlor in 1890. Even his own compositions come off sounding like tunes from a bygone age. Norman is the real thing. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEbLClgxkXx2s9ogd098SODpCmqhz-mL7b3mmq_OuDVV1MjSzQZnO1WqlVKgqabKGoZFw_c1fNpS-bRJ8o6robR15goyypPfZRtacmHc-3lDZrfqAcKiAT3eHNLm_hNXEzh9u3ARZSl14/s1600-h/latest+group+343.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEbLClgxkXx2s9ogd098SODpCmqhz-mL7b3mmq_OuDVV1MjSzQZnO1WqlVKgqabKGoZFw_c1fNpS-bRJ8o6robR15goyypPfZRtacmHc-3lDZrfqAcKiAT3eHNLm_hNXEzh9u3ARZSl14/s320/latest+group+343.bmp" vt="true" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Norman at the National Folk Festival, Chattanooga </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>He and his wife Nancy, who is his musical partner as well, live just over Lookout Mountain from us in poetically named Rising Fawn, Georgia. They were performing at the Dalhlonega Bluegrass festival back in the early nineties when I approached their RV. I was there to ask Norman if he could show me how he played Wroxall, a mando tune from The Norman and Nancy Blake Compact Disc (arty title, eh?), but that was just a pretext for talking to him. Well, he had no idea what song I was talking about when I asked and kept asking if I'd said "Rocksalt." His expression suggested that I'd asked him something as obscure as his junior high locker combination. I guess with a musician this prolific forgetting one tune out of hundreds, even when he wrote it, is pretty understandable. Enter Nancy. She was in the RV, heard the exchange and suddenly emerged with her old, white faced Gibson mandolin to show me the tune. (I had it all wrong, by the way) That was my one and only personal exchange with Norman. I have talked to Nancy a few times, though.<br />
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In my humble opinion, American music has greatly benefited from Norman's rich contribution. Let's hope there's a lot more to look forward to.<br />
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<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UEkVkJax2Co&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UEkVkJax2Co&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-28535101577185079272010-02-23T15:10:00.019-05:002011-01-30T09:28:57.816-05:00Custom Fretted Instruments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9aqN7JDqW-RRxFtg7-2W30iFdhI0u7ruggIK6kbr7A4fnZnG4ZwqiDDroRAJepH6vpMBSRVXf3ed0ZcvMT7H230_vFY9QZy8yKwfzWzY-DzRRpAy6czFVOXf8ovhKyQnSiAwdvI0HkM/s1600-h/064.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9aqN7JDqW-RRxFtg7-2W30iFdhI0u7ruggIK6kbr7A4fnZnG4ZwqiDDroRAJepH6vpMBSRVXf3ed0ZcvMT7H230_vFY9QZy8yKwfzWzY-DzRRpAy6czFVOXf8ovhKyQnSiAwdvI0HkM/s320/064.JPG" /></a></div><a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="border: medium none;"> Before I drove up to <a href="http://customfret.com/">Custom Fretted Instruments near Sparta</a>, Tennessee I checked Google Earth for directions and was sure that something was amiss. Each time I reentered the address the indicator pointed to a spot in the middle of the forest along what appeared to be a logging road. Nothing but trees. This couldn't be the place, could it? Well, yes. It could. </div><div style="border: medium none;"><div style="border: medium none;"> CFI is, indeed, tucked away in the woods up a one lane mountain road. And it would be easy to miss but for the smallest of hand painted signs indicating it's presence. Turn right up a gravel driveway off of Fire Tower Road (which is just off Hwy 111) and there you'll find the tiny shop just a hundred yards or so down the hill from owner Jim Grainger's home. </div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EhV6JsgDcSiI81K1aQ8X0t3wT14d17d3v1srPlOmcuQ-2xN2_TkPgxonKuPy5X1XxhEYp67lUIizY4_7YRjXo0z4P8waObFkpe-3o09BC0vMQgLdnPOroXZ-gxqKNiNVcZSfWd0gNR8/s1600-h/061.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EhV6JsgDcSiI81K1aQ8X0t3wT14d17d3v1srPlOmcuQ-2xN2_TkPgxonKuPy5X1XxhEYp67lUIizY4_7YRjXo0z4P8waObFkpe-3o09BC0vMQgLdnPOroXZ-gxqKNiNVcZSfWd0gNR8/s320/061.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Jim Grainger</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"> Just inside the front door is the tiniest of showrooms. And I mean tiny - four guys is a crowd in here. But you'll also find yourself in close proximity to some very high end guitars - Huss and Daltons, Gallaghers, and Taylors adorn the walls all set up, tuned, and ready to play. (I'm fighting some serious lust for one of those - more on that later)</div><div style="border: medium none;"> I heard of CFI from a friend when I was looking for someone to repair some loose binding on my D28S. He'd had some work done there and gave the referral saying it was worth the 1 1/2 hr drive from Chattanooga. </div><div style="border: medium none;"><div style="border: medium none;"> So I took the drive to Sparta, Tennessee last month to drop off my beloved Martin. After a few wrong turns due to my not bothering to print the directions and a phone call to Jim I finally found the place. Maybe I should have brought my old boy scout compass.<br />
Jim Grainger, it turns out, is a Chattanooga native. In 1956 he was a kid learning banjo when his involvement with instrument repair began. I emailed him to asked when and how he got started:</div></div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"><i> " Well, I started getting paid for doing repair work in '58. In the summer of '56 I was learning to play banjo on an old Kay I bought at a pawn shop that used to be next to the Volunteer Bldg on 9th Street. I think I paid $30 for it and it was made of white looking poplar wood and painted black. It had quite a few dings and everywhere the paint was knocked off it was white underneath. I have always been "handy" doing stuff like keeping the neighborhood bicycles running, etc., so when my Dad bought one of those "shoebox" refinishing kits from the hardware that have everything from stripper, sandpaper, stain and varnish in them and refinished my Mom's kitchen table and chairs (the same chairs that are in the office of the shop now) and I saw how much better they looked, I was happy to discover there was enough stuff left over for me to use and refinish my banjo.</i></div><i> After I got the banjo back together and playing again, it looked much nicer. The lady who lived behind us had apparently been watching my progress and when she saw I had the banjo playing again, she offered to give me a guitar she had in her attic that somebody had sat on and crunched in the top, as long as I would see if I could fix it. I remember borrowing one of my mother's compact mirrors and using a flashlight to see inside. Using a hypodermic, I would squirt glue under the braces were they were loose and would jam Popsicle sticks broken off appropriately between the top & back braces and stack books on top, as I didn't have any clamps. It took quite awhile, but I finally got everything glued back and then decided I needed to refinish the guitar, as the original finish was cracked and crazed. My banjo neck had always been kinda sticky since finishing it with varnish, so I decided to learn a little more about finishing before doing the guitar, which by the way was a 50's Martin 00-17. </i><br />
<i> My mom drove me down to the Chattanooga Public Library, which was on McCallie Ave. next to U.C. at the time, and I remember gathering up six books on finishing, which is all they would let you check out at one time, and bringing them home and discovering that many musical instrument makers used lacquer finishes. Luckily, my dad had borrowed an air compressor and spray gun from where he worked so he could paint our old 1941 Buick, so I could spray lacquer! A trip to the local Glidden store in East Ridge and I had everything the book said I needed and I basically cook-booked my way through the process. The Martin looked great when I was finally got it buffed out! </i><br />
<i> The only problem now was a couple of missing inlay dots in the fingerboard, so I went down to Bailey Music on Cherry St., which was the local Martin dealer and asked them if they could order a couple of dots for me. They said they could, but that there was a fellow in Chattanooga that was doing some pearl inlay work, so they gave me his name. The fellow lived in Brainard, and after he got home from work one evening my mom drove me to his house. I remember he looked at the guitar and told me he could replace the dots, no problem. Then he turned the guitar over in his hands and said, "This guitar has just been refinished, hasn't it?" I said, "Yes". Then he said, "Would you mind telling me who did the work?" I replied, "I did." He then said, "You are just the guy I've been looking for!" </i><br />
<i> The fellow's name was Mike Longworth and he had been doing inlay work for quite a few of the Grand Ole Opry stars and needed someone who could finish over inlay work he would do. We soon started working together, with me doing finish work. As time went on, Mike would buy and trade on instruments and sometimes they would need repair work, so we started brainstorming needed repairs and trying to figure out a way to fix stuff so it would look decent. I'm sure I wouldn't be very proud of some of the work we did at first, but as time went on & we figured out better methods, it got better.</i><br />
<i> Mike and I worked together on a part time basis until 1966, when the U.S. Army invited me to spend a couple of years seeing the world. During that time Mike got a job with the Martin Guitar Company heading up a new department they were starting in order to reintroduce the pearl inlaid series of guitars they had quit making during WWII. Mike stayed with Martin for the next 30 years, retiring as Customer Relations Manager and moving to Bell Buckle, TN where he began building ukes and I again became his finishing room guy."</i><br />
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<i> </i>After a stint in the army and a degree from Middle Tennessee University, Jim settled in Sparta to work in the furniture manufacturing industry. Meanwhile, he did builds and repairs in his basement. Word of mouth quicky spread, and after a time Jim had to choose between work building furniture and work making and repairing instruments. Yeah, not a hard choice. So in 1989 he built the shop and Custom Fretted Instruments was born. <br />
<i>"At first I would custom build dulcimers, hammer dulcimers, guitars & banjos for folks, but as time has gone on I've pretty much stopped building, except for an occasional banjo every now and then, as the repair and restoration part of our business has grown to the point there just isn't time or space for much other than repair work"</i><br />
<i> </i>Jim is also still pickin' banjo with a local band called Hickory Wind. <i>"We've been together for over 20 years, all have day jobs and are good friends, so enjoy having social gatherings where we pick a little with an occasional gig thrown in here & there."</i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklpJujJFCJvBj-x4CPan0leHV9VGs-FeN0ZNOLZ1SxorhFEEID9XsaUpUqr9tJphFiuQTGOqiSWYzzsKznYZW6F1PUl0DB2b9g4lDaxRdRMyPN0k4wxRL_MDmazQkm6FAyfmgANAEZhU/s1600-h/051.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklpJujJFCJvBj-x4CPan0leHV9VGs-FeN0ZNOLZ1SxorhFEEID9XsaUpUqr9tJphFiuQTGOqiSWYzzsKznYZW6F1PUl0DB2b9g4lDaxRdRMyPN0k4wxRL_MDmazQkm6FAyfmgANAEZhU/s320/051.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I've always been fascinated with the guys who do this kind of work. This is very exacting with virtually zero room for error. Botch a job on a pre-war Martin and you're pretty deep in it. It's the equivalent of vascular surgery, and I wish I had the talent to do it myself. But, my impatient nature rules this out for certain. <i> </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i> </i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIoVrrMftIrnAHeDhBcQ-MHoqCeSPVw-eyPBs4SEi6NTenrceOFD3s-d8JSzv9O3-5z0HZQvTfnBVme2WsKT9_RScLJUWdBLrSSWW_G390DAFIb4r1usy7LwwmZR2M0dbByDIPh3tf0RE/s1600-h/053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIoVrrMftIrnAHeDhBcQ-MHoqCeSPVw-eyPBs4SEi6NTenrceOFD3s-d8JSzv9O3-5z0HZQvTfnBVme2WsKT9_RScLJUWdBLrSSWW_G390DAFIb4r1usy7LwwmZR2M0dbByDIPh3tf0RE/s320/053.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Every guitar repair shop I've ever seen was just this tidy</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"> Personally I was amazed when I got a call just four days after I dropped off the Martin informing me it was ready. This was a unique instrument repair experience for me. Most repair guys march to the beat of a different drummer. And that drummer is SLOW! You can usually expect to wait months for a repair to be done. Years, in a worst case scenario. So, I was quite pleasantly surprised and a happy man when I picked it up the following Saturday. "<i>We try to stay on top of things</i>," Jim explained. Indeed. </div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbvkuGGlDEmhsm7uvAqgcoi3aeUzwmxyjUy6frecujioXo_Fp7yu-BGTw9bFtlafC6yczb8M772g8habdEYyEMkvbEaQqaok5pGW5aRxbxpteghu2-c-w3dIWxLGPbX1eRD17UCqxk0Q/s1600-h/050.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbvkuGGlDEmhsm7uvAqgcoi3aeUzwmxyjUy6frecujioXo_Fp7yu-BGTw9bFtlafC6yczb8M772g8habdEYyEMkvbEaQqaok5pGW5aRxbxpteghu2-c-w3dIWxLGPbX1eRD17UCqxk0Q/s320/050.JPG" /></a> I dropped off <a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2010/02/this-old-guitar.html">another guitar for repair</a> as I picked that one up, and it was while picking that repair up this past Saturday (Feb 20, 2010) that Jim allowed me to snap a few pics.</div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;"> The guitar I'm lusting over, as I mentioned earlier is the Gallagher in the center of the photo at left. That's an exact copy of Old Hoss, the guitar Doc Watson played from 1968 until 1974. Old Hoss was the guitar that Doc was playing on Will The Circle Be Unbroken - <a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2009/11/you-had-me-at-hello-thar-afternoons.html">the album I've written about previously</a>. It's even mentioned in a conversation between Doc and Merle Travis that was captured on the album: <br />
Travis: "Hey, that guitar, by the way, rings like a bell..."<br />
Doc: "Yeah, it's a pretty good ole box. Mr Gallegher made this thing. Lives down here in Wartrace, Tennessee. He makes 'em."</div><div style="border: medium none;"> Old Hoss - the original - spent a couple of decades at the museum at the Country Music Hall Of Fame until it was recently returned to the Gallagher's in Wartrace, Tennessee. When Jim got wind of that fact he arranged to have six exact copies made and this is one of them. Why six? That's how many sets of the late 60s, original equipment tuning heads that the Gallagher Company had on hand. </div><div style="border: medium none;"> Well, hearing Doc play the original "Ole Hoss" on Circle changed my life, so naturally I fell in love with this guitar. The $4000 price tag is a bit out of my reach. Okay. It's WAY out of my reach. (Thank God I wasn't carrying any credit cards the day I saw it or I'd most likely be on my way to divorce court!)<br />
<a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2010/03/ol-hoss-home-to-stay.html">(FOR A LOOK AT THE ORIGINAL Ol HOSS, and AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE GALLAGHER FOLLOW THIS LINK) </a></div><div style="border: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border: medium none;">I really enjoyed my visit. If it had been me building a shop in '89 I'd have put it in the same spot. The only thing I don't like about CFI is that it's too far away for me to hang out. Otherwise, they'd have to shoo me away with a broom.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4sFVYl98ZOmmKvjtOzkQOadu41ZBVZQRysgnE9WZYKw_swx8oTle5HC6kA1k0vk6Fy2BMTF1C9d9mYTMJxmu5MtmypeI9cY0ojtlDI3idgTJ2Ka6S7crmdd39sAzG4tZcDy_v1aHayU/s1600/054.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4sFVYl98ZOmmKvjtOzkQOadu41ZBVZQRysgnE9WZYKw_swx8oTle5HC6kA1k0vk6Fy2BMTF1C9d9mYTMJxmu5MtmypeI9cY0ojtlDI3idgTJ2Ka6S7crmdd39sAzG4tZcDy_v1aHayU/s400/054.JPG" width="400" /></a></div> The typical frenetic pace of life at CFI</div></div><div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><a href="http://saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-06T07_49_23-08_00"></a></span><br />
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In 1980 I'd saved some cash for my first good stereo. Being twenty it was hard to put back the money, but I managed a few hundred dollars and I was on my way over to my buddy's house to order the equipment from a high end audio catalog he had when his brother, also in the car, suggested we whip in to the local guitar shop. He wanted to show us a funky double-neck acoustic guitar there he wanted to buy if he only had the cash. Which he didn't. </div> The guitar was a beautiful mahogany/spruce piece with twelve strings over six, and I was smitten. So much so that after a few minutes of looking it over, and to the disgust and amazement of my buddy's brother, I bought it. The stereo would have to wait. <br />
It was the nicest, most expensive instrument I had bought up to that time and a huge step up in quality from the Yamaha acoustic I was playing at the time. And, as I discovered, the guitar itself had become a local celebrity within the guitar community during the time it hung on the wall at Bigham's Music. I made a lot of musical contacts merely by owning it. Given it's novelty and striking appearance I tended to get attention whenever I took it out of the case. Attention, sadly, that was way out of proportion to my talent. <br />
Taking it to parties or jam sessions took a large investment in energy since it's rectangular case is as large as that of an electric piano. The total package probably weighs 40 pounds or more. <br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> For a long time this was my primary guitar. The favorite, that is, until I bought a Martin D28S about in the early 90's. Then it was demoted and spent much more time in the case. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Still, it was always good to have twelve string on hand, and it <i>was</i> a great conversation piece.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Your humble blogger with the double neck and all of his hair in 1985</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> As aging guitars will, this one developed some structural problems. A few years ago I noticed that the bridge was coming detached from the top (a common problem) and there appeared to be a wrinkle in the spruce top. So I immediately took the tension off the strings and put the guitar in the back of the closet until I could get around to the the time and expense of having it fixed. </div> Well, I had some binding issues on my Martin and I took it up to Sparta, Tennessee last month for repair, and that led me to finally bite the bullet and get the double-neck repaired as well. So today I finally got to play it after years. <br />
I'd love to wax rhapsodic here about how incredible it sounds and plays, but I'd be lying. After playing the Martin, a <i>very</i> mellow guitar, for all these years I'm afraid that the old double-neck just doesn't stack up. I actually remember it sounding much better, and with some set up I'm betting I could improve it's tone, but it'll never be a great guitar. <br />
Still, it's an old friend. I bought it when I was 20, and I'll have owned this one for thirty years this November. So, I'll just say it's nice to have this venerable old guy back in action. Welcome home, Buddy.<br />
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Update! I'm experimenting with podcasting. Hear this blog post in audio:<br />
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<a href="http://www.saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-06T07_49_23-08_00">http://www.saltcreekgazette.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-06T07_49_23-08_00</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8eObRWrrJuAxdUwgYrvrIvm9UzptjTWa0ZBtj356YAUbuzbFsg4M2P2cCUVugvjVoAfL0HmiWOXfMs50bcGijvE8YWy0LQDmmXf23nXjL2ytztWBI3WlMhX-a_MbnieOCub98QAYBkmI/s1600-h/074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8eObRWrrJuAxdUwgYrvrIvm9UzptjTWa0ZBtj356YAUbuzbFsg4M2P2cCUVugvjVoAfL0HmiWOXfMs50bcGijvE8YWy0LQDmmXf23nXjL2ytztWBI3WlMhX-a_MbnieOCub98QAYBkmI/s320/074.JPG" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXwDS58_xRjpyDPuKwMalPHlIQwnqzhqhs3tG_KUFX83tzkjzRw2qT-5pqjgNrMzBbs7MpWuiFBuONjSJdgNE5hKOpiFb7YnABrOhS-FzKcjlUAS3B4UNtZCab3GTRxL4CnU2G96YQ-vA/s1600-h/075.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXwDS58_xRjpyDPuKwMalPHlIQwnqzhqhs3tG_KUFX83tzkjzRw2qT-5pqjgNrMzBbs7MpWuiFBuONjSJdgNE5hKOpiFb7YnABrOhS-FzKcjlUAS3B4UNtZCab3GTRxL4CnU2G96YQ-vA/s320/075.JPG" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEKyqIbCI_2DGau_ryvQV8YloQwes2ZKxA_AaG_JSkc_wzV7dcPJhqUURzLiQ1EdlohVxA4mV3klxnIAGwYiXcYhwSroE2yGHcjVW5Hqdm6Yb7g3qdjX4QdawFayOlzqlIbEYlU2UcKR8/s1600-h/079.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEKyqIbCI_2DGau_ryvQV8YloQwes2ZKxA_AaG_JSkc_wzV7dcPJhqUURzLiQ1EdlohVxA4mV3klxnIAGwYiXcYhwSroE2yGHcjVW5Hqdm6Yb7g3qdjX4QdawFayOlzqlIbEYlU2UcKR8/s320/079.JPG" /></a></div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-78309646441949788732010-01-25T18:14:00.012-05:002010-07-06T16:56:35.854-04:00Planet Of The Apes Tag<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1fny6SqhWA7t4ZoNShzMv9ntJO4olIlZqFFJd3-Wrm8uD4AAaKXanoD21U-8vVC3Lj4Mi0j9wW9Yk3kSPbCf1iokEiUsutVAl5s3DJK0fbDTzfc_ZAvQ85mvyPqI6I5cfxkUP8UqqkQ/s1600-h/Planet_Of_The_Apes-logo-1F1870918E-seeklogo_com.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1fny6SqhWA7t4ZoNShzMv9ntJO4olIlZqFFJd3-Wrm8uD4AAaKXanoD21U-8vVC3Lj4Mi0j9wW9Yk3kSPbCf1iokEiUsutVAl5s3DJK0fbDTzfc_ZAvQ85mvyPqI6I5cfxkUP8UqqkQ/s320/Planet_Of_The_Apes-logo-1F1870918E-seeklogo_com.gif" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div> The original version of the film The Planet of the Apes debuted in the summer of 1968 to rave reviews among my neighborhood pals. I was eight that year, and my playmates and I couldn't get enough of those funky, talking, anthropomorphic chimps. The ape village was cool, the story was exciting, and the apes were at once repellent and fascinating - perfect for little kids! And, of course, that film gave us <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKdSXfPl8vY">the single coolest movie line of all time. </a><br />
For a while all things Planet were in vogue. I remember collecting <a href="http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/potatv04-1.jpg">Planet of the Apes trading cards</a> and seeing other <a href="http://www.monstergalaxy.com/images/Multiple-ToyMakers-Planet-Of-The-Apes-PlaySet.jpg">P.O.T.A. merchandise</a> on the toy department shelves of our local Grant's department store. What I didn't remember until I was recently reminded by my childhood friend Elizabeth was that we had played neighborhood version of the venerable kid's game Tag based on that movie. She and I agree that this was most likely the creation of a kid name Richard Hicks who lived in the neighborhood for a few years. Obviously it would be a travesty to let such an important cultural phenomenon as this be lost to history, and since everyone who was witness to this is now well into middle age it seems appropriate that the details of this should be preserved somewhere - so here goes:<br />
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<b>The Game</b><br />
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Easily the most impressive aspect of P.O.T.A. for an eight year old was the dominance of the apes over the mute and docile humans. Early in the film we see a gorilla raiding party herding humans into an ambush, taken prisoner and delivered to large cages near the ape village to await whatever nefarious fate the apes had in store for them, and it was on this that Planet of the Apes tag was based. <br />
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I've included this highly technical schematic to help you better visualize the layout. Click to enlarge:<br />
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We'd divide into two camps: the humans and the apes. The humans would remain behind in the sanctuary of Elizabeth's swing set while those damned, dirty apes would head around to the front yard to hide. The goal of the game was for the humans to circle the house and return safely to the swings while avoiding the apes who would spring from their hiding places and give chase. When caught the humans would be confined to some area of the yard designated as the cage. The humans would make continued circuits until all were caught and caged, at which point that round would be over. Then, if sufficiently enthusiastic, we'd trade roles with the erstwhile humans becoming apes and vice versa for the next round. Simple, yes, and incredibly fun no doubt. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePyAUoMhCHUNBGy3dsN2df7DQYEovVkCUlAyuYwQw5a3ySya7g0wY11Jpi09tAlz-VPrw59M5q-jP0f3xy52QMGLv1xBh4yXJyVwyBQk_w_n5lNQXo8aYtJRe8QOXXYR9xb6meB9yfnE/s1600-h/Planet-of-the-Apes-BIG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePyAUoMhCHUNBGy3dsN2df7DQYEovVkCUlAyuYwQw5a3ySya7g0wY11Jpi09tAlz-VPrw59M5q-jP0f3xy52QMGLv1xBh4yXJyVwyBQk_w_n5lNQXo8aYtJRe8QOXXYR9xb6meB9yfnE/s320/Planet-of-the-Apes-BIG.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<b>Personal Observations about Planet Of The Apes</b>:<br />
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- I didn't notice at the time, but the ape village is a near perfect recreation of The Flintstones town of Bedrock. Exteriors <i>and</i> interiors. Watch it again and tell me it's not!<br />
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- At one point the gorilla general is expounding upon the animalistic nature of the humans. Watch closely and you'll notice that the actor is basically doing the contemptible Mr Potter from It's A Wonderful Life. The gestures, the vocabulary, and the verbal cadence are all dead on Potter!<br />
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- Given his conservative street cred later in life, it was odd to see Charlton Heston starring in what is basically an anti-war, anti-religion film and his character spending a large amount of his screen time bemoaning mankind's suckiness.<br />
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- I read on Wikipedia that the movie deviated significantly from the novel, especially in that the movie featured a primitive ape culture and the novel an advanced society. This was to save money on sets. That explains away a lot of contradictions. For example, the apes lived in what was basically a stone age village yet had modern rifles, writing, and scientists. Those don't add up. And speaking of not adding up, why did Taylor never clue to the fact that this planet had the same species and atmosphere as earth and that that apes were speaking (and writing) English? Dude, it's <i>Earth</i>!<br />
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- The character of Nova was just smokin' hot and I'll fight the man what says it ain't so! Even as an eight year old I was keenly aware of this fact. <br />
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<b>On Reconnecting With Old Friends</b><br />
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With the advent of the internet came the ability to connect as never before with old friends. And long before social networking sites like Facebook came into existence I was busy pounding the keys searching for college buddies and long lost childhood friends alike. I've had a lot of failure but some happy successes as well. One such success was finding my friend Elizabeth on Facebook last spring. I moved to our old neighborhood, "The Circle", on Daybrook Drive/Woodacres Circle in Kannapolis, North Carolina in February of 1967, and our backyards abutted one another. Hop over the split rail fence surrounding my house and you'd land in Elizabeth's sandbox. Our streets formed a large oval (not a circle, actually) with only one inlet, so it was a very safe place for kids to play and ride bikes. <br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=woodacre+circle,+kannapolis,+N.C%3E&sll=35.479862,-80.643108&sspn=0.002066,0.003439&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Woodacre+Cir,+Kannapolis,+Cabarrus,+North+Carolina+28081&t=h&ll=35.480011,-80.643167&spn=0.001529,0.002275&z=18&output=embed" width="550"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=woodacre+circle,+kannapolis,+N.C%3E&sll=35.479862,-80.643108&sspn=0.002066,0.003439&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Woodacre+Cir,+Kannapolis,+Cabarrus,+North+Carolina+28081&t=h&ll=35.480011,-80.643167&spn=0.001529,0.002275&z=18" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small><br />
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Since Elizabeth's yard fell in the geographic center of the circle it was often the natural meeting point for all of us. Many idyllic afternoons were spent playing in her yard (and around the circle in general).*<br />
Since finding her on the net, I've thoroughly enjoyed catching up on our lives and remembering old times. Had this not happened I'd have never remembered Planet of the Apes tag!<br />
The point is this: the internet makes possible reconnections that in the past would in all probability have remained lost. I long ago moved away from North Carolina and the connections that exist there. So long ago, in fact, that the memories seem gauzy and dreamlike to me now. What a thrill to talk to someone who was there. And there's something about this phase of my life that's causing me to seek out these connections. To sort of try to put things in context. And, too, to simply enjoy the memories.<br />
I hope all readers might reconnect to their pasts as well.<br />
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*My first intact memory of Elizabeth came when she would have been about five years old and I seven. I rounded a corner to find she and my next door neighbor Sandra having a tea party. (the actual version. they weren't protesting Obama's high taxes) As soon as they became aware of my presence I was chased away with venom. Smelly, yucky boys weren't invited I discovered!<br />
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</span></span></div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-46392422525913342772010-01-01T18:21:00.021-05:002010-03-15T14:45:01.672-04:00Back to Bluegrass - A New Technique Saves Blogger From Jamlessness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCDsS0gpu_gffPO2-2cCahfZgjGfGahZ0Irs6yI6LWR-6isoCN0NF2lcMOpZVb_GQ7R9jjMXDszatHL83eyyGFxCHV934vkVxhjSAmNOsoJvieV16L7GhdQNe3Xuf1ibqqjqF53C0zxYk/s1600-h/004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCDsS0gpu_gffPO2-2cCahfZgjGfGahZ0Irs6yI6LWR-6isoCN0NF2lcMOpZVb_GQ7R9jjMXDszatHL83eyyGFxCHV934vkVxhjSAmNOsoJvieV16L7GhdQNe3Xuf1ibqqjqF53C0zxYk/s320/004.JPG" /></a>bo</div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"></span></span> <span style="color: blue;">.</span><br />
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Bear with me, this takes a little explanation and some self-disclosure:<br />
I have Muscular Dystrophy. We've all got our crosses to bear, this is mine, and I regard it more as an inconvenience than a disability. It's a fairly mild case of a mild type of MD and I count myself as fortunate that it never was any worse than it's been. But, that said, it <i>has</i> been sufficiently bothersome in the past few years to steal away some of my abilities. It was MD, in fact, that brought to a close my brief stint as a small time Bluegrass mandolinist and guitarist. (understand that this was VERY small time. I never quit my day job or anything) In my particular case it's primarily my shoulder and upper arm muscles are affected. And since I was playing one of the most athletic instruments in a very vigorous style of acoustic music it was little wonder that I had to give it up.<br />
Consider the plight of any acoustic instrumentalist (except fiddlers) tasked with competing with the banjo - a very dynamic instrument to put it mildly. The banjo picker, with relatively little effort, can play at a speed and volume that leaves mandolinists and guitarists winded in their efforts to keep up and be heard. It takes an almost herculean effort to cut through. Obviously a good deal of muscle is required to play loud and fast while maintaining subtlety and accuracy .<br />
The mandolin and guitar are played with a "flat pick" which is exactly what it's name implies. A flat plastic pick used in a rapid up and down motion which is mainly in the wrist. Mainly with the wrist, but not totally as I found as I my upper body muscles continued to deteriorate. The technique requires quite a bit more of the shoulders and arms than I previously suspected.<br />
What began to happen was that my playing became less and less agile, eventually reaching the point where I felt that I was bringing down the entire band. My leads were getting sloppy, and on some tunes I had to give up playing lead altogether and simply provide rhythm. But along with the erosion of my technique went the joy I'd always taken from playing. It took a while for me to make the decision to finally let go, but let go I did. About two years ago I left the band.<br />
I haven't been exactly wallowing in depression over that loss, but I did feel it. Our band, Pointe South, was a very agreeable mix of personalities. I can't think of a single disagreement between us, and most practices were 80% picking and (at least) 20% laughter. There were no overweening egos to suck the joy out of the experience. Traveling to our gigs was great. Always great times.<br />
And, of course, I loved playing as well. I spent a lot of my life playing guitar in solitary for want of any musical friends. So when I began to get some Bluegrass chops and ventured out into the local music scene I found the musical groove I'd always desired. So losing Bluegrass was, indeed, a loss to me.<br />
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But, Bluegrass had never been my only style to play. In fact, I was a relative late comer to the style. I wrote last month on this blog about the influence Doc Watson had on my musical preferences. After hearing him play I did fall in love with Appalachian music, but it wasn't my first or final stop. Prior to that time I'd enjoyed, and been influenced by, all manner of rock, jazz, and folk music. John Denver, in fact, was my first childhood singer/hero. He was at the top of the charts just as I began to learn to play in the early seventies, and his style of fingerpicked, arpeggio accompaniment became the first technique that I concentrated on. This fingerstyle focus served me well over time. For example, the Kansas hit Dust In The Wind was fairly simple fare for me when in high school. Later when I grew in my admiration for Blues, I was able to pick up the alternating bass finger picked style of that genre quite easily as well.<br />
I say all this to highlight that music wasn't over for me when I left the band - only Bluegrass. I still intermittently kept up with fingerstyle blues. But, it that's sort of a solitary pursuit, and, not having the vocal ability to play solo gigs, I was once again relegated to my living room. No band buddies to practice with every Wednesday, no parking lot jam sessions to enjoy. I was having some fun, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did the BG.<br />
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After I left the band and began shift my emphasis back towards fingerstyle it occurred to me at some point that perhaps I could simply adapt fingerpicking to the fast,single note bluegrass tunes just as I had played them as a flatpicker, and I began to explore a new technique. It was rough going at first, let me tell ya. In fact, I felt many times that I was attempting the impossible and really didn't throw myself into it with sufficient discipline.<br />
And I actually thought that I was inventing something brand new. Well, nothing could have been further from the truth. Fingerpicking (using plastic thumb pick and steel fingerpicks as I do) actually predated flatpicking. The most obvious early example is that of Mabelle Carter of the Carter Family. She's credited with inventing the "church lick" style of country music accompaniment utilizing thumb and fingerpicks.<br />
I actually became aware that there were others fingerpicking bluegrass when I read the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Claptons-Guitar-Watching-Henderson-Instrument/dp/0743266358#noop">Clapton's Guitar</a>. The book isn't so much about Clapton's guitar as it is about Clapton's guitar builder - Wayne Henderson of Virginia. Aside from building some of the best regarded custom guitars out there, Wayne is a very accomplished Bluegrass guitar player. And he fingerpicks exclusively, a fact which was mentioned many times in the book.<br />
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Well! That was quite a revelation. As I began to research the technique I learned that both of my penultimate flatpicking heros - Doc Watson and Norman Blake - both began exclusively as finger pickers before developing a flatpick style. (Doc is widely regarded as the one who "invented" bluegrass flatpicking, but I'm sure there are plenty of music historians who'll dispute that notion) So, okay, it's not impossible.<br />
Discovering this I redoubled my efforts a few months ago, and I'm beginning to see some real progress. I can't tell you how happy this makes me. I'm not 100% of the way back yet, but the basics are there, and I can now see a time in the near future when I'll be a competent bluegrass picker once again. Of course, there's not much I can do fingerstyle with the mandolin, and, frankly, I'm not in the least interested in trying. I'll just be overjoyed if I can find my groove in a festival parking lot again. Overjoyed.<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TdwBpJFUL7o&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TdwBpJFUL7o&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-41923497542085773142009-11-24T13:47:00.026-05:002010-03-30T06:51:23.016-04:00Guitar Archaeology - unearthing treasure from beneath the bed<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6AMKic4p8skRolsD5igWDH64W9uKIorS3CTqoHI3gtdsXR6C2iLUn4WOPUl8-fpSiQnYVaKIAqvC4wXC2rCumfmpRvN7RejjsltNCwyUOWt04PBc7EpHcHwbZP_s4iZjbM2GsFP9lvg/s1600-h/46martinbeauty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6AMKic4p8skRolsD5igWDH64W9uKIorS3CTqoHI3gtdsXR6C2iLUn4WOPUl8-fpSiQnYVaKIAqvC4wXC2rCumfmpRvN7RejjsltNCwyUOWt04PBc7EpHcHwbZP_s4iZjbM2GsFP9lvg/s320/46martinbeauty.jpg" /></a></div><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: blue;">Grandpa's old guitar brings an jaw dropping price. Follow this '46 Martin D28 Herringbone from discovery through appraisal by one of America's foremost acoustic instrument experts.</span> <br />
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Back in 2003 I got a call one day at work from a good friend of mine: “Hey Man, you know a lot about guitars. I’ve had an old one in my closet for years, and I’d like to find out something about it.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Okay, whatcha got?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Well, it says C.F. Martin on the peg thing.” My pulse quickened a bit.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Do you have a serial number?”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Yeah, I wrote it down. Hang on…” He gave me the number and while he continued to tell me a little about the guitar I searched through my wallet for my handy Martin Guitar serial number guide. “It was my grandfather’s. I don’t have any idea when he bought it, but it’s been around as long as I can remember.” I could almost feel my pupils dilate. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I found the card with the date ranges and began scanning down the columns. My excitement increased as I kept having to look further and further back in time. Then, there it was – in the 1945 column. I checked it again to be sure. Oh. My. God. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Bro, you have got to bring me that guitar to look over. Can you bring it tomorrow? I’ll come to your office to see it.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Sure, but don’t expect too much. It looks pretty rough.” </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “No problem, just bring it. You may have something pretty special.” </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Pretty special indeed. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Martin Guitars are one of the most revered production line acoustic guitars made in the United States. Renown for high quality and a signature sound, this company has been in the guitar business in Nazereth, Pennsylvania since the 1830s. At just under the company’s century mark they began production of a new design – the Dreadnoughts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> A guitar with a much larger body than the parlor guitars they’d previously produced, the Dreadnought style had a bigger sound as well. Louder and bassier than its diminutive forebears, when these “D” models (for Dreadnought) began to be produced in earnest in the early 1930s they quickly became a favorite of vocalists looking for suitable accompaniment – particularly country vocalists. The D models came to stay. The intervening decades have seen this body style become an industry standard copied by nearly every builder of acoustic guitars.<br />
But the passage of time has also made the early Martin dreadnoughts jealously collectible. A combination of materials no longer readily available (Brazilian Rosewood, Adirondack Spruce), excellent craftsmanship, and superior design combine to give the older models a tone and sustain truly remarkable. And they’re not making any more. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> In the 1960s it began to be recognized that models of pre and post World War Two vintage were superior to those then being made. By then design and material changes had taken some essential edge off the sound. A new Martin still sounded great, but there was just something about those old ones. They began to be snatched up by collectors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> And, as with all collectibles, the values have risen amazingly. A pre-war D28 in perfect condition can bring tens of thousands of dollars in todays vintage instrument market. And to a slightly lesser extent, those produced immediately after the war also are highly prized. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Every connoisseur of acoustic instruments dreams of finding an old vintage treasure at a pawn shop or garage sale and buying it for next to nothing. It happens occasionally and the stories make their way through the guitar community like urban legends:<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>A guy spotted an old mandolin case at an estate sale, and only wanting an old case, offered $20. When he got it home he discovered that the case contained a 1924 Gibson Lloyd Loar mandolin worth $250,000. </i><br />
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</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>A musician spots some children playing with an old guitar at a friend’s house. The guitar turns out to be a ’35 D28. It had been in a closet for years and the kids were dragging it around outside.</i><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> So I knew that my friend was in possession of something special even before I’d even seen it. I eagerly look forward to the next day when I could look it over. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> My buddy actually ended up bringing the instrument to me at work the next day. I was a little nervous when I saw a new looking case. One element that can enhance an instruments value is inclusion of an OHC – Original Hardshell Case. This new case obviously wasn’t original. Moreover, it hinted that we might have gotten this number wrong and the guitar wasn’t so old after all.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We laid it on my counter and opened the case. Bingo! Home run! Yeah, Baby! High Fives! Chicken Dance around the room! What lay before us was indeed a Martin D28 herringbone. I quickly rechecked the serial number and consulted my card. Yep. 1945. Wow. This is the kind of piece that will get you featured on Antiques Road Show. I told my buddy that he had himself a genuine American treasure.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8Walfx7_MK3yVCMgliBdKIqJJeVlEBGEBJqzwa5z5VNfx3xZAa4CnHjT2e2STWV22DDa6nGwMI4Ur9xglEg8_qXGIhrB3Cx2R1ywZRt-Cv17Q6M90-k8YgmuJYVh45qGhChZRMuWoY4/s1600/the+46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8Walfx7_MK3yVCMgliBdKIqJJeVlEBGEBJqzwa5z5VNfx3xZAa4CnHjT2e2STWV22DDa6nGwMI4Ur9xglEg8_qXGIhrB3Cx2R1ywZRt-Cv17Q6M90-k8YgmuJYVh45qGhChZRMuWoY4/s320/the+46.jpg" yr="true" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> The strings were still on it, and to my shock the guitar was actually close to being in tune when I hit a G chord. Of course, that first strum put them out of tune. They'd have to come off in any case. But the fact that it had been put up for more than twenty years with the strings tensioned was a bit worrying.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> There were condition issues, to put it mildly. The guitar was sixty years old, and it looked as if it had spent the lion share of those decades without a case. There were scratches and wear on every surface. The top was deeply worn from hundreds of hours of strumming, and where the finish wasn’t scratched it was cracked from age.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I checked the tuners and was relieved to find the original hardware. There didn’t seem to be any cracks or other structural problems save one.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> After years of string tension a guitar neck will begin to bow a bit which raises the string height which in turns affects playability and intonation. Most modern guitar necks are equipped with an internal, adjustable truss rod to make adjusting neck position a simple matter of turning a hex key. But these Martins didn’t have an adjustable rod, so they require a neck reset to correct any bowing. This is an expensive, difficult, and time consuming procedure that involves taking the neck completely off of the guitar, shaving a bit off of the heal, and regluing it all back in to place in the proper position. Obviously something for an expert repairman.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> This guitar had a neck bow, but rather than reset the neck some repairman had long ago simply sanded down the original ebony bridge to reorient the sting angle. It was a cheap fix, and probably did greatly improve the playability of the guitar. But it was death to the tone. This was a problem. I wasn’t sure how much of one, but it would obviously have to be fixed. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> But despite its condition, I knew that this was a very valuable chunk of wood. And it's being a "herringbone" model just made it all the better. Herringbone in this case refers to a design of decorative binding that borders the guitar top and had a pattern reminiscent of fish bone. It's much the same pattern one will find with herringbone fabric. Martin got this product from Germany and the war disrupted the availability, naturally. They ran out of it sometime in 46 or early '47 and thereafter featured a simpler binding decoration, thus making the herringbones especially desirable.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg540rxYc4IcPH_j3CakrWi7iC92-9oVfO350IPoPFSWz86Yo9nSIntEfSCACa1wS7ClSs7w8zZQYmRQ0hpE8NAYwLqIwNRA_VmToX4uNnHTNr0eW2CoAuf8kp95Vr3g9f00h8a-sFIhDc/s1600/herringbone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg540rxYc4IcPH_j3CakrWi7iC92-9oVfO350IPoPFSWz86Yo9nSIntEfSCACa1wS7ClSs7w8zZQYmRQ0hpE8NAYwLqIwNRA_VmToX4uNnHTNr0eW2CoAuf8kp95Vr3g9f00h8a-sFIhDc/s320/herringbone.jpg" yr="true" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “What do you think it’s worth?”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I honestly answered that I really had no idea, but that I was sure it would be way, way more than he was expecting. Given the many factors that could affect its market value what we needed was a professional appraisal. And a guitar of this caliber would require better than any local guitar shop guy’s opinion. This called for an expert. That expert could be found at <a href="http://www.gruhn.com/">Gruhn’s Guitars</a> in Nashville.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> In the sixties a young zoology student named George Gruhn became fascinated with, and a collector of, vintage instruments. The fascination grew to obsession that grew into a flourishing business opened in Nashville in 1970. Since its humble beginnings, Gruhn’s Guitars has grown into one of the most prestigious vintage dealers in the country. Everybody who’s anybody, the famous and obscure alike, have shopped at Gruhn’s. Forgive the cliché, but George Gruhn literally <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gruhns-Guide-Vintage-Guitars-Identification/dp/0879304227/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1">wrote the book</a> on vintage guitar collecting. He’s The Man, and his shop was just two and a half hours drive north. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> My friend left the guitar with me and I made immediate plans to drive up to Nashville the following week. Since the owner/friend wouldn’t be available to make the trip I took along my buddy Dave – a fellow musician. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Gruhn’s shop is on Nashville’s main drag, Broadway, in the heart of downtown. Amazingly, they had their own parking - a surprise since parking in N’ville is usually a tremendous headache. We entered through the back door and let the guy at the counter know we needed an appraisal. He directed us to a small glassed in room towards the front of the shop before dialing up the P.A.: “George, we have an appraisal.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A few minutes later a bespectacled, bearded guy about sixty years old wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt burst in. This was George Gruhn. And I recognized the scene being played out immediately. It was exactly reminiscent of a doctors office visit. He greeted us absently and immediately went to examine the “patient” which was laid out on a examining table, er, desk.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Well, it’s a ’46,” he said instantly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Really, I checked the serial number and thought it was a ’45,” I replied. This was a mistake, apparently. It seems that vintage instrument experts don’t appreciate unschooled galoots telling them how to do their jobs. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “You read it wrong!” he brusquely retorted. Someone with less of a sense of humor might have been offended, but I was enjoying the show, so it was no problem. Then he softened a bit and he explained how the cards are often misread. He continued his examination ignoring us mostly. Then, just as a doctor would do, he began to write his results. All of this took maybe 15 minutes. Dave and I began to make small talk which turned at some point to his cat. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> Well, upon mention of said kitty old George suddenly transformed. Aloof guy was replaced by gushing animal lovin’ guy as he eagerly bragged on his pet ocelot of which he produced a photo from his shirt pocket. The guy <i>really</i> loved animals. Dave and I traded amused looks, and after a bit ooohing and ahhing over his cat photos Gruhn got down to business. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “I’m appraising this at thirteen five.” </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I blinked. “Excuse me? Thirteen five?”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> “Thirteen thousand five hundred dollars.” This beat up, currently unplayable old guitar was being valued at $13,500.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I’m guessing my stunned silence communicated my astonishment. He continued, “ Of course, it needs some work. It’s going to need a neck set, fret job, and a new bridge.” He went on to explain that an exact copy of the original bridge would have to be made, and that this should be done by the best. I asked if Gruhn’s would do the work, but he said they only do in-house restorations. He guesstimated that the necessary repairs would be pretty costly, but the value of the guitar would be enhanced even beyond that. He gave me the name and number of a master repairman in nearby Franklin who he felt was qualified to do the work. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> He also wanted to buy it. I let him know it wasn’t mine to sell, but that I’d let the owners know of his offer. Hands were shaken, thanks were proffered, and the “consultation” was over. But he really must have hated letting that guitar get out the door because twenty minutes later as Dave and I were marveling at the impressive inventory of vintage goodies (and, of course, purchasing a Gruhn’s Guitar t-shirt) he approached us again and emphasized his interest in buying. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> When we finally left I held a tighter grip on the case than I had on the way in. I called owner/buddy from the parking lot to break the good news, then Dave and I walked down the block to Jack’s BBQ where the Martin sat beside me in the booth as we ate and downed a couple of celebratory beers. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBbM-kEydtcmN2S2e66ZjjjIZvMrniPn8QQkfWcud_pBRmkOgZZgiWI-Dwa3YwXErwDQRl8bpzX-Gv7CEkL9BFM96n8Uz3A_LJNPV2KkDBF-ZbGMyIQ2C4Fm1UyCI9MOUhcACCvUp2YgM/s1600/headstock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBbM-kEydtcmN2S2e66ZjjjIZvMrniPn8QQkfWcud_pBRmkOgZZgiWI-Dwa3YwXErwDQRl8bpzX-Gv7CEkL9BFM96n8Uz3A_LJNPV2KkDBF-ZbGMyIQ2C4Fm1UyCI9MOUhcACCvUp2YgM/s320/headstock.jpg" yr="true" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This story will have a part two. The guitar has yet to be repaired since repair is so expensive. It’s also hard to coordinate with the repairman. He’s very much in demand in the Nashville area, so when I called him to try to set up a time to bring it to him he wasn’t accepting new work. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I’ll update, of course. I’m dying to play this once all has been restored. That’s going to be a real treat. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-53992291729857640862009-11-18T15:08:00.016-05:002012-07-14T11:57:19.701-04:00Marble Riot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: blue;"> The day my teacher lost her marbles </span><br />
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Each spring, as if responding to some deep instinct, every boy at Shady Brook Elementary would at once become obsessed with the game of marbles. One week all would be normal, and the next the hallways would ring with the clink and clatter of a couple of hundred pocketfuls of the cats eyes, puries, and steelies as we made our way to class or to lunch or to wherever. There were other occasional fads to distract us: hot wheels, clappers, yoyos. But it was marbles that I remember being the perennial “thing.”<br />
During recess on those beautiful Carolina afternoons the playground would be sub-divided into various arenas where we grade school gladiators would do battle and claim the spoils. Make no mistake – this wasn’t any modern day, warm and fuzzy, politically correct playground silliness like they practice today with no score being kept. That nonsense wouldn’t fly. No Ma’am, this was cut-throat marbles played for keeps, and a good or lucky player could double his net worth in one afternoon. ( If you had in your possession some especially collectible marble it most likely stayed in your pocket. Only the most bold, talented, or fool hardy of players would risk a precious specimen.)<br />
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This many distracting marbles on the premises always proved to be a source of extreme irritation to our teachers, and so it was to my teacher, Mrs. Gillan. At some point during the spring of my second grade year she established a zero tolerance policy on marbles in her class room. If you had them, they’d better stay in your pocket or book bag while in the room, because if she saw (or heard) a marble it was promptly confiscated – often with extreme prejudice. Mrs. Gillan was a sweet lady, but she didn’t take any crap.<br />
Given the impulse control of the typical 8 yr old boy, one can imagine that she had a nice collection of marbles in fairly short order. She did. The collected contraband was kept in a softball box (read that: a cardboard box in which a softball had come) in her upper left hand desk drawer. Upon seeing a marble, the miscreant owner was required to march to the front and place the marble in the box himself. Having made the "perp walk" to the front myself a few times, I can tell you that it was a bitter pill. Here you were relinquishing your hard won treasure with no chance for appeal or expectation of return. It was rough justice, and it just didn’t seem right that such a trove should be in the possession of a sexagenarian - a <i>girl </i>sexagenarian- who hadn’t a clue to it’s worth.<br />
But it seems that nature indeed seeks equilibrium, and this imbalance would soon be reconciled. One afternoon while Mrs Gillan was ranging around the room checking our work, a marble was somehow dropped and bounced its way to mid-room. She collected it and demanded that the owner claim it. When there was no confession despite repeated demands, she walked to her desk, opened the drawer and brought out the softball box. Just as the now well laden container cleared the drawer, its bottom gave way spilling what must have been at least 3 pounds of marbles and scattering them, Big Bang fashion, to the four corners of the room. <br />
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I’ll pause here to savor the memory…<br />
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As with the actual Big Bang, an irresistible force of nature had been unleashed by this event – namely the marble lust of a room full of second graders, and poor Mrs. Gillan was as helpless to stop the subsequent pandemonium as it was possible to be. Instantly a great roar went up that could be heard the length of the hallway. Screams of glee resounded as we all scrambled to stuff our pockets with as many freshly liberated marbles as possible. Desks were upended in the melee, and there was fierce competition among all to reach the best pieces. We were vaguely aware of Mrs. Gillan’s attempts to quell the riot and restore order, but, as I said, this was a force of nature. We were as helpless as she was. Moses may have parted the Red Sea, but I doubt he could have calmed the waters in that room that day.<br />
After probably 15 seconds things began to calm down. Most of the marbles had by then been collected and hastily pocketed, and order began to be restored. A few of our classmates complied with Ms Gillian's demand that booty be returned and dutifully placed their marbles to the box (the sheep!), but most of us left the room a bit heavier and lot richer that day.<br />
I’m sure now that Mrs. Gillan and the other teachers probably had a great laugh afterwards. There’s also no doubt in my mind that one or two marbles made their way into some nook or cranny somewhere that day and still wait to be discovered by an eight year old boy with a keen eye and a steady thumb.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;">POST SCRIPT: </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"> It's now a few weeks after I posted this story, and as I was perusing James Lileks' site I found the following amusing item from a 1930's Minneapolis police blotter:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;"> <i>An Eastside police squad went to a filling station at Nineteenth and Como when a woman reported boys playing with dice. Apparently she failed to take note of Spring, police said, for the boys were playing marbles.</i></span></div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-13166339734704093282009-11-12T19:24:00.004-05:002010-03-16T21:42:03.820-04:00Hesitation Blues<a href="http://www.saltcreekgazette.com/hesitation%20blues.mp3">Sorry about the singing!</a>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-20585225346304880732009-11-12T13:12:00.020-05:002010-03-24T14:30:33.637-04:00You had me at "Hello Thar" - Doc Watson and An Afternoons Epiphany<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwrHf4e5WXmm-O6DqZwlzufuVbldTOXz4PcEbk7U_Ts8WzQLq63Uv78-dN-fyNA67n4muCGq8PTt3izFvmU7ay41PnNlR9b2PPbTJ7hm7hmT4VfFNTvL1S98-M55qc_fLevBMNFnhQyqA/s1600-h/album-doc-watson-vanguard-visionaries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwrHf4e5WXmm-O6DqZwlzufuVbldTOXz4PcEbk7U_Ts8WzQLq63Uv78-dN-fyNA67n4muCGq8PTt3izFvmU7ay41PnNlR9b2PPbTJ7hm7hmT4VfFNTvL1S98-M55qc_fLevBMNFnhQyqA/s320/album-doc-watson-vanguard-visionaries.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<span style="color: blue;">Author's teenage introduction to the music of Doc Watson triggers seismic shift in his world view.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a>Music was forever changed for me one afternoon in 1974 when my older cousin tossed me a pair of Koss headphones and said “listen to this.”<br />
I snugged the high quality phones over my ears as the needle contacted the vinyl, and what I heard was unlike anything I’d heard before:<br />
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<i>“...Jimmy Driftwood wrote this thing. Hello thar. (laughs) One, two, three…”</i> came the deep country voice. <i>“Do we wanna try a break? Now, your fiddle break comes right after I get back and whoop her brother and her paw and sing a chorus..”</i><br />
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What I was hearing was the studio chatter of Doc Watson that was included on the now legendary “Circle Album.” More formerly known as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Will-Circle-Unbroken-30th-Anniversary/dp/B000063686/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1268679061&sr=8-3">Will The Circle Be Unbroken</a>, it was one of the first, if not <i>the</i> first recording project bringing together the old time bluegrass legends with one of the “hippie” generation groups – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. <br />
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</div>Legendary musicians including Earl Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, Mother Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis, and Roy Acuff along with some lesser known, but equally awesome, players such as Vassar Clements, Norman Blake and Doc Watson joined the The NGDB at a Nashville studio for several days in 1971 to make musical history. The result was a three album set that opened an entire generation to bluegrass – including me. <br />
One unusual feature of the album was the inclusion of the crosstalk between musicians captured between takes on an open mike. I'd never encountered this before. Most of it was fairly pedestrian conversation about changing strings or stubborn fiddles resisting tuning or how many basses Junior Huskey owned, but all of it was a fascinating peek behind the curtain. In some ways more revealing about the musicians than the incredible music they recorded that week. <br />
What this particular snippet I was hearing revealed about Doc was that he was just a nice and decidedly unpretentious person. There was a bit of joking with the band and then the producer came over the PA and asked, <i>“Wanna try one, Doc?” </i><br />
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<i>“Let’s see if we can put down a take. Where’s the harmony at? Right here?” </i><br />
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Then the magic happened. A clear, simple guitar riff kicked it off accompanied by harmonica. A few bars and then the rest of the band comes in with Vassar Clement's brilliant fiddle soaring high over head… ”Along about 1825 I left Tennessee very much alive. And I never would’a got through the Arkansas mud if I hadn’t been a ridin’ that Tennessee Stud…” <br />
For me, everything changed after that. All of the Rock n’ Roll that came before lost most of its significance, and a new direction was set. Doc’s rich voice and his signature guitar riffs were electrifying, and I was from that point forward a folk/bluegrass devotee. For me there is pre-Tennessee Stud and post-Tennessee Stud. <br />
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A budding musician with a $40 department store guitar couldn't ask for a better old time bluegrass primer than "Circle." Doc was merely the tip of the iceberg. There's an entire side devoted just to blistering Earl Scruggs banjo tunes; Vassar Clements amazed with Lonesome Fiddle Blues and Orange Blossom Special; Jimmy Martin came through with his perfect "high lonesome" bluegrass tenor on his classics Losin' You, You Don't Know My Mind, Sunny Side of the Mountain, and My Walkin' Shoes. Nashville Brahmans Mabel Carter and Roy Acuff lent authenticity with renditions of Wildwood Flower and Blood on the Highway among others.<br />
Conspicuously absent was the creator and reigning king of Bluegrass: Bill Monroe. He wanted no part of this, as I understand. And this must be understood in context. Those were the waning days of the youth revolution, and Bill felt it was beneath his dignity to participate in a project with "hippies." I've long wondered if he ever regretted that decision. The album became a classic and bolstered or launched the careers of Doc, Vassar, and Norman Blake and immortalized all who participated.. His inclusion would have made a damned near perfect album perfect, I think.<br />
Over the years I’ve owned this album in vinyl, 8 track, cassette, CD, and it’s now in the iPod in my pocket as I write. I've listened to it for literally hundreds of hours, and it's still my favorite.<br />
Music didn't stop there for me, of course. I love many, many styles of music. The musical world is just too rich and varied, and I could never confine myself to only one flavor. But I must admit that I have a visceral reaction when I hear Sally Goodin' well turned on the fiddle or Flint Hill Special on the banjo. I feel it in my DNA. Mountain music just does it for me. Period.<br />
But of all the delights I've gleaned from this album, none have come close to Doc's cuts. There's a power behind his picking that is a rare quantity and that I'm finding extraordinarily difficult to describe. It's like a force of nature. And he carries an authority only due those who are the real thing. <br />
So, I now number myself among the many, many admirers of Doc Watson and waste many hours fruitlessly attempting to bring fourth a sound resembling his when practicing Deep River Blues or Black Mountain Rag - knowing I'll always come up short, but loving every second of the attempt.<br />
You're the man, Doc, you had me at “Hello thar.”<br />
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<span style="color: blue;">Post Script:</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">The rest of the afternoon was a revelation as well. My cousin introduced me to Pure Prairie League, Poco, The Eagles, and Jimmy Buffett, among many others, that day. This was at the height of the country rock n' roll groundswell. It was all like manna for me. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">And all of this musical enlightenment was helped along in no small part by the fact that we were listening to this on the best audio equipment I'd ever encountered. Readers over forty will recall the abysmal state of typical audio equipment back in the 70s. Most of us were relegated to those phonograph/8 track/am-fm combos with the smoked glass cover and two squeaky speakers. Rich bass response was unknown to the vast majority. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">But, Bobby, my cousin, had just graduated college and had invested in some top flight equipment. So when I slipped on those headphones and heard Doc talking, it was of an audio quality I'd never before experienced. </span>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-58987680939957551882009-11-11T16:50:00.003-05:002009-11-11T16:52:37.313-05:00A great old fiddle tune: Goldrush.<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UDsgpvZZUWk&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UDsgpvZZUWk&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
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This some great friends and bandmates and I on New Years Eve 2005. Robin Bates - Banjo, Larry Bunn - smokin' hot flatpick guitar, Betsy Blankenship - bass.Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-7854286358979902052009-11-11T12:51:00.004-05:002017-05-25T13:41:17.541-04:00A Tribute to Hugh Jackson McLaurin, USAF<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<em><span style="color: blue;"> Originally published May 24, 2007</span></em><br />
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Fifty years ago today on May 24, 1957 my uncle, Hugh Jackson McLaurin, took off from McCord AFB in Washington state for a routine training flight in a F-102a. Just a few minutes into the flight the jet began to experience catastrophic power loss. Ejecting from the aircraft was the obvious option in those cases; however, at the time he was over a populated section of an nearby Army base and couldn't be assured that the plane would not crash into family housing or into a parade ground occupied by a company of US Army soldiers. Rather than risk harm to them he stayed with the plane piloting it to an unpopulated area. By the time he "punched out" there was insufficient altitude for his chute to deploy and he was killed. He was 33. <br />
Soldiers on the parade ground that day requested that they man the honor guard at his funeral in recognition of his valiant efforts on their behalf. A few months later he was awarded a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross for his selfless actions that day. <br />
His fascination with aviation can be traced, according to his brother, to an afternoon in the 1930s. They were working the fields of the family's North Carolina farm when several squadrons of planes from Myrtle Beach AFB flew over while evacuating from the path of a hurricane. After that he knew he wanted to fly and at 19 he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943. He never saw action in WWII but saw plenty in Korea where he was awarded his first DFC for extraordinary skill in bringing home an aircraft significantly disabled in combat. <br />
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Aviation was Uncle Hugh's life, and I recently found out that he published several articles on the topic. One, published in the March, 1951 edition of Flying, entitled 13,100 mph -Strait Up! described training in a pressure chamber for high altitude flight. <br />
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I never had the pleasure of knowing Uncle Hugh. All this happened three years before my birth; but, I was named after him, and this has been a point of pride for me all my life. I'm very proud to be descended from a man of this caliber, and I can only hope that if faced with a similar decision I'd show as much courage. </div>
Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-47410703994191747642009-11-11T12:08:00.011-05:002010-02-23T21:51:53.680-05:00Two Brothers<span style="color: blue;">You've read about the infamous Andersonville Prison. Now read about death in Northern Prisons during the civil war.</span><br />
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This Veteran’s Day my thoughts turn to Daniel and John McLaurin – two of my great, great uncles. In May of 1861 my great, great grandfather Neill McLaurin and his brother Daniel left their Morven, North Carolina farm and rode off to war with the Anson Rangers. That unit would later be officially designated as Company A, 4th N.C. Cavalry. They were 31 and 32 respectively at the time. <br />
Left behind were two older brothers, their mother, and several sisters. On July 3, 1863 the 4th N.C. was involved in the Battle of Gettysburg, and the following day, while screening retreating troops and supply trains, Daniel was captured.<br />
He, like all Confederate prisoners from the Gettysburg Campaign, was sent to the Federal prison camp at Fort Delaware. Conditions were grim at Fort Delaware as one would imagine they’d be anywhere men were confined in close contact prior the development of immunology. But, there were political conditions which would place these prisoners in jeopardy far beyond the normal risks of disease. More on that later. <br />
Meanwhile, a month later back in North Carolina, one of the brothers left behind to tend the farm, John, enlisted in the C.S.A. He was 42 years old, an advanced age for a soldier which was most likely why he hadn’t enlisted at the outset of the war. I suspect that it was word of the capture of his brother that prompted him to make the move. He traveled to Fort Fisher near Wilmington and joined an artillery regiment there tasked with defending the Cape Fear River and the last open port in the South. <br />
Ironically, he too was captured in January 1865 when Fort Fisher finally fell to an intense Federal assault. He was sent to the Federal Prison at Elmira, New York. <br />
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The story of the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia is quite well known. Thousands of Federal prisoners were held there in deplorable conditions and faced death by starvation and disease. It was plainly a horrific place. When General Sherman was making his way through Georgia in 1864 the prison was liberated and news of what took place there made big headlines in the North. There was an atmosphere of general outrage, and it seems that revenge was sought at the highest level of the United States government. <br />
Now, the historians have generally granted the moral high ground to the Union side of the Civil War. Clearly, maintaining human bondage as the Confederacy sought to do is morally indefensible, but what took place in Federal prison camps certainly leaves that side with a black spot. <br />
I’ve done a great deal of research on these two prison camps, and the preponderance of evidence points to deliberate withholding of food, clothing, blankets, and proper housing from the Confederate prisoners held in these and other Northern prisons. Though the funds were appropriated and the food and goods readily available in the north, the death rate from starvation and disease at all Northern prisons was horrific. In fact, at Elmira, where John McLaurin was held, the death rate was within a couple of percentage points of that of Andersonville in war ravaged Georgia. The necessary supplies simply weren’t provided. <br />
It must be considered that the South during the months that Andersonville was in operation was a devastated country. Sherman’s total warfare had disrupted or destroyed the food production and distributon in the agriculturally rich region. Not only were the Confederate troops starving on the battlefield, but the citizens well. The lack of food or other provisions at Andersonville perfectly mirrored the conditions of the South in general. Everyone was starving. <br />
Meanwhile, the North, unmolested by war, had a series of very good growing seasons. Food was in abundant supply. Just outside the Elmira prison walls the citizens of that city enjoyed full larders and warm homes while just yards away starving Confederate prisoners shivered in the New York cold. <br />
The two brothers shared a tragic fate. Just five months after Gettysburg Daniel McLaurin, 33, died at Fort Delaware. A little over a year later John McLaurin, 44, also died at Elmira. He lasted just under a month from the date of his capture. These men were starved to death in an act of petty revenge by the U.S. Army. They’re both buried hundreds of miles from the family farm back in North Carolina. <br />
I had four great, great grandfathers fight in that war and survive. And I revere these men, but it’s the tale of the tragic deaths of these two brothers that touches me most from my family’s Civil War history.<br />
Their mother, my great, great, great grandmother was a Scottish immigrant who’d buried her husband and a fifteen year old son years before the war. She died at 74 in August 1865, just four months after then end of the hostilities. I can’t help but believe that it must have been a broken heart that killed her after word that she’d lost the two sons.<br />
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As a post script let me salute my Dad, Bill Owens, veteran of the Korean War. Thanks, Dad, for your service to our country.Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-31772182602076822942009-11-10T12:47:00.016-05:002010-02-23T21:55:23.038-05:00Red Paw Night 1970<span style="color: blue;">Bullfrogs and Ghosts? What more could a 10 yr old away at summer camp want?</span><br />
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In the late sixties, at the age of nine, I began spending a week each summer at a boy's paradise: Camp Elliot in Black Mountain, N.C. It was owned by the YMCA in my home town of Kannapolis, and engendered some of my sweetest memories.<br />
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The camp was laid out in a narrow mountain valley, maybe 1000 yards long, with 1920's era cabins dotting the hillsides around a small lake. A lovely little chapel sat at the opposite side of the valley next to the superintendent’s cabin, and a huge mess hall clung to the hill overlooking the glade below.<br />
Our days were full of the usual summer camp fare: archery, arts and crafts, riflery, swimming, and hiking. But we still had plenty of free time to hunt the giant bullfrogs that inhabited the lake or just hang around with new found friends.<br />
Meals at the mess hall were prepared by old black men in very white aprons, and one feature of every lunch and supper was "snake juice" - basically tea and lemonade - served from big, sweating metal pitchers. Platters of fried chicken and big bowls of fixins were delivered to each table by boys on "mess duty." If the Chief Counselor ever stood with his hand raised during a meal it was our signal to clam up. The last kid talking had to, by tradition, stand up and sing a song to the entire room. (I made well sure never to be the last kid talking.) He'd then proceed with whatever announcements he needed to make to the group.<br />
Hanging above the door of the mess hall was a huge red plywood foot attached to ropes and pointing upward. We learned on our first day there that this was the symbol of Red Paw, the Cherokee boy ghost spirit who inhabited the camp.<br />
The legend went like this:<br />
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<i>In the valley where Camp Elliot was situated once stood a Cherokee village. The Indians lived a happy peaceful existence hunting the in mountains and fishing in the lake until they came to be terrorized by a rogue mountain lion. One by one the villagers would be stalked and killed, and the efforts of the hunting parties sent to bring it down were consistently frustrated. </i><br />
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<i>There lived in the village a boy of extraordinary bravery: Red Paw. One day while walking alone thru the forest Red Paw became aware that he was being stalked by the mountain lion. Rather than panic, Red Paw coolly led the big cat further into the forest and away from the village before drawing his knife and turning to confront the killer.</i><br />
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<i>Suddenly prey turned predator, and a mighty battle was enjoined between the lion and the surprisingly strong and agile boy. The advantage in the fight shifted several times until the lion had had enough and climbed a huge pine to get away from Red Paw’s deadly, slashing blade. </i><br />
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<i>Undaunted Red Paw simply clinched the knife between his teeth and started up the tree in hopes of delivering a</i> coup de grace<i>. He knew that if the lion were to escape then the stalking of his fellow villagers would continue.</i> <br />
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<i>When at last Red Paw had climbed as high as the cat, he found him snarling and backing away on a large limb. With one mighty leap Red Paw lunged and sank his blade deep in the heart of the lion. But, in so doing, both lion and boy plunged to the forest floor far below. </i><br />
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<i>Before he took his last heroic breath Red Paw had the satisfaction of seeing the killer cat dead on the ground beside him. His spirit then left his body and dwelt in the valley protecting all ever since. </i><br />
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A great yarn for a nine year old, to be sure. We were told that on occasion Red Paw would call for a Pow Wow deep in the forest for which he would signal by coming (in spirit form, of course) to the mess hall in the night and turning the foot upside down, and if we ever came to breakfast and found the foot pointing down we would know that the coming evening would be “Red Paw Night.”<br />
My first summer there came and went with the giant red foot pointing upward. There was lots of talk about Red Paw. It was explained that the small red feet painted on the foot of some of the bunks were messages left by Red Paw to non-believing former occupants. But, there was no call to Pow Wow.<br />
Then during my second summer we arrived for breakfast one morning to find a great clamor among the other campers already in the mess hall. As we entered we beheld the red foot pointing towards the floor. We instantly became electric – Red Paw Night had finally come.<br />
That evening about dusk we were instructed to return to our cabins where the counselors showed us how to prepare for the event. We had to strip down and don an improvised Indian breechcloth. This was basically a towel between your legs secured by a belt around your waist. I can just imagine how silly this must have looked, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever at the time. We all got a liberal dose of Off , slipped on our sneakers, grabbed a flashlight, and were on our way.<br />
We were led up an old fire road, 100 of us from the various cabins, far into the forest. After a time we saw torches burning in the distance. This was the Pow Wow ground. A large circle of benches, probably 30 yards across, was arranged around huge, unlit logs, obviously intended for a bon fire, stacked ten feet high. <br />
After all the boys had taken seats the head counselor stood to welcome us and tell us about the tradition of Red Paw Night. He told of how generations of boys had experienced what we were about to experience and reminded us that this was a solemn event. We were warned to act accordingly.<br />
Silence descended once he finished, and we were left listening to the crickets. Only in the flickering light of the torches penetrating the intense dark of the forest. Then in the far distance came the faint jingle of bells and the steady, but equally faint, beat of a tom tom.<br />
One hundred boys were dead silent and transfixed on the drama as the sound drew closer. Suddenly a line of dancers in full Cherokee ceremonial dress burst into the circle and began to circle the unlit pyre in rhythm to the drumbeat. We recognized the main dancer as one of the counselors who was full blooded Cherokee and a long time fixture at the camp. The other dancers were some of the older campers who’d been taking “Indian Dancing” as an activity during their years there. And let me tell ya they were freaking great! Full costumes, feathers, bells on their ankles. The lead dancer did a very authentic sounding Native American song. This was just all very, very exciting to that ten year old, and the memory is still vivid despite the passing of 40 years.<br />
After a couple of minutes of dancing the drums stopped suddenly and the dancers froze on cue. Then the lead dancer/counselor stepped forward to tell the tale, in dramatic detail, of brave Red Paw’s battle with the mountain lion. How that battle had taken place on the very ground on which we sat, and that the tree from which the fell was the giant pine on the edge of the circle. We were told that Red Paw’s selflessness and bravery should be an example to us. It went on for probably fifteen minutes, and I can’t remember the exact speech, but needless to say it was pretty cool.<br />
Then the moment arrived. He would try to evoke the spirit of Red Paw. The drums started up and the dancers resumed their circumnavigation of the unlit logs. DUM dum dum dum, DUM dum dum dum… Then again a sudden stop. The leader began the Indian song again, the stopped and, arms raised and hands open made a quick thrusting motion towards the unlit stack while asking the "Fire Spirits of the North come forth!" …Nothing. Crickets.<br />
The drums resumed and the group danced to the southern side of the pyre, and again the same speech and the same result. They attempted the same from the eastern side, again nothing happened. Then came the western side of the fire. Indian song, the gesture with the hands, and again the spirit evoked – and WHOOSH! To this day I have no idea how they did it, but that huge stack of logs just went up in flames. Instantly. My pulse must have been racing along near 150 bpm. I was awe struck, as was every boy there. The forest around us was clearly illuminated for the first time since we’d arrived. Phenomenal. To the people who gave me that moment, I owe eternal gratitude.<br />
But, just when it seemed that it couldn’t get any better, the voice of Red Paw (yes, BY GOSH, it <i>was</i> his actual voice), now grown ancient in the intervening centuries, suddenly emanated from the top of the tree in which he and the cat did battle. He told us to obey our parents and be good citizens or some such. Frankly, I was too amazed by a disembodied voice in the top on a giant pine to pay a great deal of attention. Eyes as big as saucers we listened with rapt attention. Then he finished, and Red Paw Night had concluded. We made returned to our cabins <i>much </i>quieter than we'd arrived. <br />
I have dozens of great memories of Camp Elliot – the giant tadpoles in the lake, my first time in a canoe, my first bulls eye with a .22, walking by the screened back door of the mess hall one night and seeing frog legs sticking up out of a metal bowl about to be dropped in the hot grease, an encounter with a rattlesnake, every kid in the camp trying to play Wipeout on their knees when the song came across the camp PA. But none are as vivid or as fondly remembered as Red Paw Night.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>UPDATE!!!!</b></span><br />
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</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b> <span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">Writing about <a href="http://saltcreekgazette.blogspot.com/2009/11/red-paw-night-1970.html">Red Paw Night at Camp Elliott</a> the other day aroused my curiosity as to what might have become of the place. I knew it had been sold long ago, and I guessed that it most likely had been turned into a subdivision or resort development. Anyway, I Googled it and came up with <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=camp%20elliot%20road%2C%20black%20mountain&rlz=1R2GGIE_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl">this</a>:</span></b></span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLQEukvhFr7S4s6wOuG3G2F4meVAW7k8lv5GRo6UDpQ6j_mOZUdnMQqHnpasTHegfvoSAplGhExanHMT8u_1oIA-2XlRCecJKUiKztgLoGioNf0NfcU0LuIk-RHR2I3k31TgTy9eFfhE/s1600-h/camp+elliot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLQEukvhFr7S4s6wOuG3G2F4meVAW7k8lv5GRo6UDpQ6j_mOZUdnMQqHnpasTHegfvoSAplGhExanHMT8u_1oIA-2XlRCecJKUiKztgLoGioNf0NfcU0LuIk-RHR2I3k31TgTy9eFfhE/s320/camp+elliot.jpg" /></a></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div>IT STILL THERE! Most of it appears to be intact. The red topped building at the top of the image is the chapel, and the red topped bldg to it's left is the old Camp Superintendent's cabin. Mr Safrit was the man during my day. Anyway, it's now a special needs boarding school for boys. And you can see a virtual tour of the place here:<br />
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<a href="http://www.stonemountainschool.com/virtualtours/outside.mov">http://www.stonemountainschool.com/virtualtours/outside.mov</a><br />
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It all looks much smaller that I remember. Things usually do. I overestimated the length of the valley. It's just over 400 yrs from chapel to the south shore of the lake rather than 1000yrs. And I remembered the Mess Hall being bigger and higher up on that hillside. Anyway, I love that the place is still populated by kids. Live long, Red Paw!!!!!<br />
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</span></div></div>Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40696306501888021.post-52847933803309646842009-11-09T16:27:00.007-05:002010-02-15T13:32:27.477-05:00Back to the Moutain Opry<a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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I was happy that Katie wanted to tag along on my first trip back to the Mountain Opry in quite some time. She's 13, and into that phase where parents represent inconvenience at best and rank humiliation at worst. But, there she was volunteering to ride up to Signal Mountain with me. Great!<br />
Nothing had changed up there in the two or three years since I'd come. Same old school building that's now been home to the Opry for 30 years. Same predominantly elderly audience. Same dim lighting, Same uncomfortable seats. Same authentic feel. Unfortunately they were fairly light on talent that night. Lacking any of the better bands to fill out the schedule, they were left with those 8 member (or more!) pick up bands featuring maybe 3 guitars, 2 fiddles, 2 banjos, 2 mandolins, or any combination thereof. All blissfully being at once played in different keys, time signatures, or, sometimes, even different songs.<br />
I think that The Mountain Opry should be judged for what it is. And what it is is pretty cool: a free, amateur folk music venue that's more about the musician's joy than any notion of perfection. Even on the nights when fairly good bands do show up there's no mistaking it for any kind of slick production. At sometime during the night ladies will move through the audience taking donations to keep the lights on, and 100% of the talent works free.<br />
Years ago a band I was with played there, and I got a great compliment the following week. A young twenty-something recognized me from the week before and expressed great disappointment that we wouldn't be taking the stage that night as well.<br />
This night I took in the scene from the unique, for me, perspective of the audience. Every other time I've come it's been as a musician, and my usual M.O. had been to go directly to one of the backstage jam/practice rooms, or to get involved in a jam session outside in the milder months. This time I came sans guitar or mandolin, and in no shape to jam in any case. So we sat in the audience. I was sorely disappointed that I didn't see anyone I knew. Odd, that.<br />
Back to Katie. I fully expected her to be bored and consider things hokey. But she really seemed to enjoy it. Now, boredom wise it certainly didn't hurt that she was constantly texting. But, that diversion notwithstanding, by the end of the evening she declared that 'banjos rock!' and that the fiddle was pretty much the bomb diggity and now she wants to learn to play.<br />
She was delighted to hear that I actually had a fiddle way in the back of the closet that she can have, and she scratched out some notes when I gave it to her. I suggested that she may want to focus on the mandolin instead. I pulled out the Flatiron and showed her some 'Old Joe Clark'. She seems excited and ready to learn, but I'm bearing in mind that the thirteen year old brain can switch focus with the frequency of a cheap radio. So I'm not holding my breath on this one. Still, I'd be delighted beyond words if she were to stick with it, and her Mom would love for her to take up the fiddle.<br />
I'll keep you posted.Chip Owenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14842924784643371507noreply@blogger.com0