“Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

Traces of blood on the neck from fingers tips that were bleeding were not a pleasant sight. The callouses on my hands, should have been hardened from the manual labor they had performed in those early years.   Once I picked up the borrowed guitar, it so enamored me with it’s sounds that I didn’t want to put the instrument down.

With the tips of my fingers sliding down the strings and over the frets, they became so tender as I kept on trying to get the chords right.  Unburdened by imagination of my capabilities, I just kept pick’in those strings, even though the first layer of skin on the tips of my fingers on the left hand was so sore with the presence of bleeding.

After many painful sessions, more-so to the ears of others, my sister and I began performing at Sunday School and our country school house.  I would sing the melody and my sister the more difficult harmonic references.  Fortunately, the suggestive gyrations of the hips and strutting the stage had not yet come into vogue. Most entertainers have their own signatures, such as Madonna or Lady Gaga in their attire or the movements of Elvis or the hat of Frank Sinatra.  Our signature, when the curtain parted, and what the audience would see,– both of us on the piano bench, sitting erect, shoulder to shoulder, with my sister’s fingers on the piano keys  and me cradling my guitar facing the opposite direction.  Well, we thought it was dramatic!!!

After a few performances and being politely applauded (mostly by our family), it was quite obvious that playing the guitar and singing was not going to be my calling.

However, the acoustical guitar has always had a special place in my heart.

Several years later, for an early date, trying to impress my wife to be, I purchased tickets to the Globe theater in Balboa Park in San Diego to hear the legendary, world renown, classical guitarist, Andre Segovia. With seats about twenty feet from where he sat, with his left hand curled around the neck of his guitar, I could see the difficult and demanding movements of his fingers as he played the music of Bach.

At the time, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, played on an acoustical guitar, didn’t seem to make many points but over the years something must have lingered in my wife’s heart.

Just a few weeks before leaving Arizona, for a 54th wedding anniversary gift, she purchased tickets to hear Esteban, an acoustical guitarist, who studied under Andre Segovia, in Spain, for three years.  Our reserved seats were about twenty feet from Esteban and I was able to see every difficult and demanding movement of his fingers.

As I listened and watched, I couldn’t help but wonder if in their early days, if Segovia and Esteban, with their illustrious careers, had begun by    JUST PICK’IN.