Nothing Is Forever
As you climb Maslow's pyramid in life, you come to understand that time is the only true currency there is. The most valuable thing you can give someone is your time. The only thing you can never replace is time. This photo represents the time of a talented luthier who is now running out of time himself.
A few years ago, one of my friends on the Electra Forums announced that he had rescued a "Workingman" model that had been mis-restored:
X280 with Greco vintage EG series pickups. I got the X280 as a carcass,no pickups,someone had applied shellac with a brush,all the pots were frozen with dried shellac,a mess. I stripped all the shellac off,resealed with tru-oil,replaced the pots with Alpha minipots and orange drop caps,Greco pickups-7.42K neck,8.16 bridge...
At least 5 different pieces that I can tell,some very straight grained,some flamey,none appear to be from same piece of lumber-almost painted,but the easiest way is hard enough they always told me...
X280s had ash bodies,walnut stained-I didnt go as dark,let some of the grain out.
The resulting guitar was simply stunning and it had a voice all its own. A decent X280 is barely worth three hundred bucks but this particular guitar was valuable to me because it had a lot of my friend's time in it. I'm not a believer in spirits inhabiting inanimate objects or anything like that but --- man, this thing has mojo.
A while ago, a woman whom I loved desperately asked me if she could borrow a guitar on which to learn. I packed and shipped the guitar to her. It was about four years ago, I think. Over time, it acquired a sort of permanence in her possession. She isn't the type of person to let anything go. It sits in her bedroom now; I like to think it's watching over her as she travels through her life away from me.
Last year, I became kind of depressed about the whole thing and I contacted my friend and asked him to repeat the magic. To take another Workingman and do the same things to it. In other words, to create a replica of his first work. He declined. Said he was tired lately. Didn't elaborate. He was never much of a talker.
Four days ago I found out that he is dying from stage four bone marrow cancer. It was just diagnosed. There isn't much time. What he needs is a miracle but the age in which we live no longer admits of those, as if we have eliminated the possibility of divine intervention by focusing too hard on the improbability of the Divine itself. He's in St. Louis. So I'm going to try to visit him, to say goodbye. To thank him for his efforts on my behalf, and to thank him for his time, which cannot be returned to him, or me, or anyone.