The Fall of Santa Fe

Many, many, many years ago when I was in middle school, my dad bought a guitar.  Now when I say guitar, I don't mean a guitar that parents buy their five year old .  I mean he bought a real guitar.  It was a Santa Fe style Takamine that had, and still has, the voice of an angel.  And even though he says he bought it for the both of us, everyone knows he really bought it for me.  The reason he bought the guitar is a story in itself.  Allow me to tell you the tale the best that I can recall.

If you didn't know, Harlan, Kentucky is one of the greatest places in the world.  And one reason its greatness towers over all those other places in the world is because of a little music store called Abraham's.  Abraham's has been there for about an eternity and a half meeting the musical needs of the Appalachian people there in Harlan County.  I am not sure, but I am pretty it sure it was a sunny afternoon when I strolled into to Abraham's on that fateful day.

On that fateful day I walked into Abraham's a proud up and coming guitarist.  Upon entering the music store, I scurried past the amps on the left and found perched so innocently in a guitar-stand, high up on a brown counter, a beautiful Takamine guitar.  Now, this wasn't just any guitar.  This was a real guitar.  This real guitar cost $1400...up until about three minutes later.  

Now, I am almost certain that on a previous visit the employees at Abraham's asked me not to play the guitars.  Despite my previous orders, though, I decided to pick up that magnificent, $1400 guitar and play a tune.  Well, that didn't last long because before long I was asked to stop.  This is where the story gets good.

I, like a good little preachers kid, placed the guitar back on the stand and walked to the front desk to make an inquiry about something I do not remember what.  But, as soon as I got to the front, it happened.  The guitar fell off the stand.  It was not pushed off the stand.  It did not jump off of the stand.  Two minutes after I put it back on the stand, it fell off the stand.  To this day, I do not know how it happened, or why it happened, but it definitely happened.  Needless to say, those at Abraham's were not very happy about what had just gone down.  Literally.

I would love to beef up this story and say that after the guitar crashed three feet to the floor everyone rushed back to see the damage , but I am pretty sure it didn't happen like that.  After hearing it crash to the ground and worrying that it was done for, I walked back to find the guitar still intact and in much better shape than I thought it would be.  All the damage that had been done was cosmetic and the guitar still played great.  But that didn't mean I was out the dark for there was still a price to be paid for the damage done.  So, I called my dad and he walked down Main Street from the church he pastored to clean up the mess I had made.

Upon looking over the damage, the store owners decided I (and by "I" I mean my financially independent father) had two options: 1)I could either pay $150 in damages or 2)I could by the guitar for $900.  After a couple of days, my dad did the unthinkable.  Despite the fact that I was the one that messed up and despite the fact it was expensive, he bought me that guitar.

To finish up this long, over-dramatized story, the day my dad brought that guitar home for me, everything was great.  I took it out of the case, removed it from the plastic inside the case, and began to hear that guitar sing.  It sang so pretty, I wanted to tell my dad how pretty it sang.  So, I quickly made my way to the dining room where he was sitting and started bragging about how pretty my new guitar could sing.  Not long into the praise report of my new guitar, he stopped me with words the I needed to hear.  "I bought you that new guitar and you still haven't thanked me."

~

God has blessed me beyond my wildest dreams, and tonight I have genuinely realized this reality.