Children and guitars. Not always a good thing. I lived in an old house for a while when my youngest son was in his twos. The living room was fairly long and it continued in through the dining room which was equally long. Quite a hardwood runway for a little kid to get a pretty good head of steam testing the legs and the limits of speed and agility. Speed usually, agility rarely.

I had a Washburn acoustic guitar I’d inherited from my dad. It was like new. I don’t really know how old it was, but it was a decent guitar. I had my dad’s Martin as well, and I played it mostly, but I did keep the Washburn on a stand in the living room so I could grab it when the urge hit to play something.

I was in the kitchen one evening and heard my kid being rambunctious in his room and then I heard him do his speed test. I was just listening, I didn’t see any of what happened, but I heard him run out of his room, through the little hallway and into the dining room headed toward me. I heard his little feet do the slide…stop…squeak on the hardwood floor as he reached the entrance to the kitchen, and turned around and ran back the other way toward the living room. I just caught a glimpse of his little butt as he turned around and he was gone.

I heard the crash. I heard the guitar strings doing their dying song with a final twang. I ran, the kid stopped. He looked like he was seeing the devil herself, mouth open, and stock still. The guitar laid on the floor and it didn’t look comfortable in the least. The strings were attached at both ends, the bridge, and the saddle, but the top of the neck where the tuning pegs are and the rest of the neck were apart. It had snapped off.

The Washburn went into the case. I’m no guitar mechanic, I had guitars to play, so I didn’t really worry about the Washburn. It stayed in the case. We moved and it moved with us. It was just something we had that looked like a guitar case that sat in the closet. I never opened it. I never cut the strings off and I didn’t worry about the Washburn.

At work one day we were sitting around the up desk in the showroom and talking about whatever important jokes we had and we started talking about music. Everyone knew I played guitar in a bluegrass band, but Bert said he used to play guitar, and that was new information for me. He said he used to work at a guitar shop and used to play. And he said he wasn’t bad at it, and would love to start playing guitar again. But, he lamented, he didn’t have a guitar. I told him I had one he could have if he could fix it.

I brought the guitar into work the next day and gave it to Bert. He took it home and fixed it with JB Weld and brought it back in to show me. It worked! The guitar played perfectly, it had a small seam where the crack used to be, but that didn’t hurt anything and it was strong and it played true. Bert had a guitar!

I think Bert got rid of that guitar at some point but he acquired other guitars and he plays. I’m glad the old Washburn did its job. The world is better with music.