Lucille (apologies to B.B. King)

We are going back forty years here. Just about forty years ago, a neighborhood buddy sold me a guitar for two bucks. Yep, kids, that's back when two bucks could buy you a GUITAR. Well, this guitar, anyway.

I named her Lucille. Yes, a blatant rip-off moniker based on B.B. King's beloved Gibson ES-345 or some such number. But that was her name, and I so named her with green Dymo label tape to make it official.

This thing is no Gibson. It is a no-name brand. It is a very inexpensive acoustic that will NOT stay in tune, and at least one tuning peg is bent about 20 degrees. When I first procured her, I didn't know a lick or a chord, but I learned a few, and I recall composing a very poignant, socially conscious song about living up in my Fifth Avenue apartment in NYC, far above the madding crowds, and so forth.

I went off to college and lost track of Lucille, who was relegated to the back of a closet. While in college, I bought a more suitable Alvarez acoustic, and Lucille was all but forgotten.

Only this past Christmas, while visiting back home, someone had released Lucille from her nearly four decades of languishing in the recesses of the closet. I cannot explain the feeling, but it was a fine reunion. I went out and bought some new light gauge strings, lovingly cleaned and polished off four decades of dust, and strung her up (backwards, as I am a lefty). She came home with me, and I've been strumming and picking for a little bit almost every day.

I'm not sure if it's for the music, or for the bar chords I'm finally trying to get comfortable with, or if, while I am under her spell, Lucille is really just a pretty effective time-travel machine.