My grandfather is the reason for my interest in guitar. I once strummed the strings of one of his many collector acoustics and electrics, even a dobro, and loved every moment. Grandpa Al taught me the G chord, and from then on I was hooked. He signed me up for classes with a bluegrass instructor in my early teens, and I went to a few sessions, but I had rock n roll at heart.
I stole my grandfather’s 12-string acoustic guitar in my mid-teens, on a journey to Seattle to be rebellious and to get drunk freely and spare for change on the side of the road. It was a big mistake. I broke several strings of the guitar on the hitchhiking part of the expedition. In a small suburb just outside of Seattle, a man walked up to me, and asked me if I could play. I tried my best with what I had, and he took me into the guitar shop across the street to spend fifty dollars on refurbishing my grandfather’s guitar.
I played the guitar on the streets of Seattle for drug and alcohol money. I was offered a record deal with some people I met on the street and I was too ****** up to play. They passed me up. I slept near the harbor one night, and made a terrible mistake. I smashed the guitar and left it on the top of a trash can downtown the following morning. That day, I hitched back to Olympia.
When I got back to my home town, I snuck over to my grandmother’s house and crept into the guest room door in the courtyard. I had been gone for just short of a week. She heard me come in and came knocking on the door angrily, which I had locked. She became afraid and called the cops. Knowing this, I tried to jet out of there and ran into a nearby police vehicle that immediately pulled me over, arrested and booked me. I got out several days later, and never told my grandparents the truth about what happened to the guitar. They asked several times.