May I mention how marvelous your comments have been?  So many of you have expressed beautiful thoughts; more handsome because they expand on the subject at hand.  I assure you we are the good people who possess something valuable, something to protect.  We will.

When I was three and could only patrol the sidewalk right in front of our house, I would often go AWOL mentally and strum an imagined guitar.  This was so peculiar that the adults on our tiny block sometimes called me Mr. Banjo.  I suppose this after a particularly vigorous outdoor rehearsal.

Did you make your first guitar or other instrument?  I mean the broomstick-cigar box sort.  I could pick out tunes on those things.

I knew a kid named Dave, at five he was ‘sperimenting with upside-down buckets of various sizes.  And he could play on that homemade kit; he could bang out "La Bamba" like it was his job.  Today it is.

I worked with an unbelievable art teacher who could describe colors and textures in a voice that made your mouth water.  She had a broad Brooklyn accent of Yiddish idiom and was the only art teacher I ever met that made me want to take medium to canvass and learn a new language.

Aren’t good people amazing?  This lunatic I occasionally visit has built a model of some long-ago train line that covered eastern Pennsylvania.  He sits and he grins as it toots and climbs; it’s all rather glorious.

I don’t care for that Rickenbacker guitar, I read it as tense; you own three and can’t imagine life without one.  I think most PRS models possess a physical aspect usually associated with Italian grandmothers; you know they are the absolute best bang for your buck.  I don’t want to be seen with that brutal medieval oddity that looks like it fell off a rack in the dungeon studio of Vlad the Impaler.  It says “Antifa” all over it.  I bet you don’t care much for that one either.

As for amps, you start with a Fender, maybe two.  If you remember Music Man in its 70s heyday a modern equivalent is the Fender Hot Rod series.  Marshall amplifiers are of unique tone and some greats like Jimmy Page completely master that voice.  In a club too much wattage allows you no headroom.

On some December mid-60s nights I was alone in the music section at Sears.  The winter coat made me sweat while calculating the splendor of those Lipstick case pickups on a Danelectro.  Today I proudly own an LTD Hybrid- 400 of the silkiest finish imaginable.  It came with Lipstick up front and splittable ‘bucker in the back.  A friend lifted some sort of electronic restrictor plate and now it breathes deeply.

Once I owned too many guitars; 26 as I recall.  It was greedy and acquisitive of me so I gave up the deviant pleasure.  Today I have the standard issue of a little more than four with a few retired in the southern pasture.  A bass guitar doesn’t count.

You hold on to the very few things that complete you.  I vaguely feel sorrow for those who today crassly display their inner hollowness.  They are so lost within this vast and varied world of treasure that they can find nothing to cherish, nothing to love; nothing to imagine.  It’s both sad and dangerous.

But those Lipstick pickups of youthful Christmas wish list?   They are way better than I once imagined.

Michael James has been a professional guitarist and Public School music educator for over forty years