First serious guitar in it's first gold color...It was me and my guitar all the time back then

I practiced guitar every chance I got. To begin with it was a challenge set out before me to keep up with my friend Pete who, as it turns out, was a natural-born musician, one meant to stay in the field of music as he has to this day. First the chords had to be learned, and then how to play them effectively and then how to move from one to another without my dog falling asleep at my feet in between chord changes.

Heck, I shut my bedroom door and let it rip. I worked a matching funds deal up with my parents as I recall, buying my guitar and then my first amp with their help. The amp was  a small Gibson amp which I remember as having amazingly nice terrible tones. ( cost 90 bucks) Amps back then ran on tubes, like old tvs used to, so I had strings, amp tubes, and tons of guitar polish, paint and finger picks to buy.  Basically this new music world introduced me to a real need for an ongoing supply of money. But maybe even more than that, this music world gave me a sense of power and direction.

I never once thought about my parents as I wailed away on my guitar in my room, unless they were knocking  at my door telling me to turn down my amp, or that  it was just too late to be playing.  It is a miracle in fact  my parents didn’t have me hauled off to Siberia gladly paying for  all shipping charges.  But in truth in all those years of me grotesquely banging out chords I couldn’t play and plodding along from one mistake to another, my parents rarely complained.

My great parents who put up with me and my attached guitar

This is again where God’s sense of humor comes into play.

This is a picture of my guitar playing son; the apple fell right next to the tree.

God is still smiling.

Yeah I got all those years of me blowing my parents out of their house back in spades when MY son began to pick up the guitar. Heck I was learning the Beatles back then when I grew up; my son was learning heavy metal. My music had comparatively the likeness of a gnat yelling while my son’s music  was most like a congress of baboons announcing that 3 AM is not really too late to be playing. ( And I only use baboons instead of herd of elephants here because I just love that the term for a bunch of baboons is called a congress of baboons-like in our congress, but anyway…..) So yes my life has kept God laughin’ for sure.

My shadow always had me and my guitar in it.  I dreamed big and very well. If school had given tests on the music of our day I would have earned a four-year scholarship at any school of my chosing. Some guys liked to wash their cars; I liked to repaint my guitar from silver, gold, red and then finally to black. But all this guitar playing  practice work wouldn’t go unused.

There’s no doubt my interest in guitar playing helped me through those high school years by providing a point to endless hours of  effort on my part and by encouraging me to dream big, to imagine myself making it into the big time. Later on it would help me find my way through college and then my guitar playing would again be source of endless hours of entertainment or torture, it all depended upon one’s point of view, as my own family grew up.

typical family gathering with music, dancing and singing...

But my kids and I rocked it out, just as my mom did for all of us as we grew up. Sometimes, perhaps much to my parent’s chagrin, I got to  jam it up at their place once more and even got to rock it out with my Mom and other relatives.  As Shakespeare wrote: “All are punished”, this was my point of view on the  matter. No one anywhere was safe from my guitar playing and singing self.

I sat down for every occasion......

There are really three of us in this picture (this pic. posted in an earlier blog)I played for just about every family affair

Mom played her wonderful organ music, I hit the guitar, Father-in-law Howard sang while my wife's mom listened.

Here’s to lots of music, lots of good times to recall over the holidays and to plenty of great times ahead…

Franque

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