Two Guitars
Guitars come and guitars go, and I have had my share. Chances are about 8 out of 10 that a Northern California carpenter will own a guitar. A good portion of those will believe they can play it. Every once in a while somebody decides to get the work crew together to have some fun and bang out a few tunes. It's happened only a couple times and the reason is when 7 carpenters try to play something together, it makes a God-awful racket, even worse when it's electric, to which we would all prefer our ordinary workday sounds of chop saws, hammering and compressors; soothing by comparison.
I have had maybe 10 guitars altogether, and what I have remaining are these two. Each connects me to a close friend who has since left us.
This first one I call the Star Guitar for the inlaid stars on its fretboard. It has a spruce top, and the back and sides are curly Koa. You know I love the curly grained woods. It was created by a friend of mine.
Phil Brock was someone I met at the Vine Hill project 1997. He, like me, was a craftsman with a contractor's license, which allowed us to be free agents in the construction world. He had been, long ago, part of the Navarro Ridge Mendocino communal tribe that was the core of the Vine Hill construction effort.
He came on the scene later in the project, but stayed on well beyond the end of it. He was another one of us all-purpose builders that could be put to any task and pull it off, but by the end, he was asked to stay on as a caretaker and occupy one of the other houses on the property. Years later the place was sold, and he went with it. As caretaker for the new owners, and he lived there for 20 more years, before old age and infirmity forced him to assisted living, and then took him away.
He was a couple of years older than me, and he had been in the Navy back in 1962. He was the only person I knew who had witnessed a nuclear explosion. He was a young enlisted man in the Navy, aboard a ship setting sail for the Central Pacific. They had shore leave in Honolulu then cruised off 800 miles to the West South West on a training mission. They weren't told of their mission until the last day. They were to witness an atomic explosion near Johnston Atoll. They were guinea pigs to be subjected to direct exposure of the radiation, as they might be during a nuclear battle at sea. There were 31 nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1962. His must have been one of them. There is even a whole category called "Atomic Veterans" who were exposed to blasts as a scientific experiment, sometimes 20 times or more. Phil just experienced the one as far as I know. There was even a test 400 miles off the California coast in May 1962.
Our birthdays were a few days apart and I had been meaning to ask him the details the next time we got together for a birthday lunch. When I called and finally reached him, he was in a memory care facility in Washington State near where his son lives. He had fallen and hit his head I believe, and said he was recuperating. In a couple months, a mutual friend called me and said he was dead.
I did several construction projects with him and he introduced me to one of the four smugglers I've had the pleasure of working for over my short and uneventful lifetime. Phil had known him from the old days in Mendocino. This guy had married his childhood sweetheart after he got out of prison, and had hired Phil and me to remodel their home in West Marin.
He was not doing any kind of illicit business when I worked for him, and was doing very well in his straight gig, but did he have stories to tell. I'm an automatic fact checker when I hear anybody say anything, but most of what he was saying added up, with maybe a little hyperbole. But I was taken aback when he introduced me to a local music legend as a guitar player, quite a stretch, and I had to decline her invitation to sit in with her and her friends, who were real musicians. We had passed a guitar around at the jobsite one day, each taking a turn entertaining the others with a short song. That was it. I held my own there, but I couldn't call myself a guitar player. We more humbly call ourselves guitar owners.
Anyway, Phil had a good gig that covered his rent and utilities, and small projects around the property to earn extra cash. There was plenty of room for a shop space and he set himself the challenge of crafting stringed instruments. He made a couple of dobros, and he was working on a mandolin for years, but his best work was this guitar I bought from him one time when I was feeling flush.
He was the creator of this guitar, and it's made of Curly Koa and Phil Brock. How can I put a price on that?
Now Ves Fowler was someone I met at Powell Peralta 1987, a completely different kind of character. This is the guitar he gave me. He called it a "beach guitar"; nylon string, a quality no-name Mexican guitar; warm mellow tone, easy to play. This is the one I play day after day, while the larger steel string Star Guitar hangs on the wall. I'd sell the Star to someone who knew Phil.
Ves was there at Powell before I was and we hit it off right away, him being a combination of a hippy, a surfer, a body shop painter, all round general carpenter and metalworker, a guitar enthusiast and a clown. He was a few years younger than me and for a while we both tried to learn to skateboard. We both got predictably beat up skating and after a while, I stopped altogether while he kept on. It was quite common for him to come into work in the morning limping or otherwise injured from a bad slam, but he was brave that way, as you have to be to be a skater.
We worked side by side for years and in 1990, I became his boss as facility manager for Powell's factory complex in Goleta. It was my sad duty to lay him off at his request because he was having PTSD episodes on the one-year anniversary of his son's horirfic suicide. It was my last act as facility manager. I laid him off, then I laid myself off, and moved to Northern California.
Years later, in 1997, my son Johnny and his pals landed a project to build an over the top indoor Skatepark in Ventura, down the coast and they enlisted me to help pull it off. I looked up Ves, who in his latest evolution sported a cowboy hat, still the same hippy funnyman under that. He in turn helped me pull it off. When we were working there we had a rule that you could treat yourself to a short guitar break whenever the mood struck you, but it was usually Ves or me that did it. He was beginning to fancy himself as a cowboy poet, and even set himself up a few paid music gigs.
This beach guitar was a gift from Ves to me at the end our gig at SkateStreet. After that project was done, I only saw Ves a couple more times before he packed up with his new wife and moved off to Nogales, Arizona, to continue to write cowboy poetry in the desert, and be friend of the refugees. I hadn't seen him in years when I heard he had succumbed to his hereditary kidney failure.
I'm keeping this one.
Not for sale. Uncle John's Garage Sale is just the name of the book.
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All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
Guitars come and guitars go, and I have had my share. Chances are about 8 out of 10 that a Northern California carpenter will own a guitar. A good portion of those will believe they can play it. Every once in a while somebody decides to get the work crew together to have some fun and bang out a few tunes. It's happened only a couple times and the reason is when 7 carpenters try to play something together, it makes a God-awful racket, even worse when it's electric, to which we would all prefer our ordinary workday sounds of chop saws, hammering and compressors; soothing by comparison.
I have had maybe 10 guitars altogether, and what I have remaining are these two. Each connects me to a close friend who has since left us.
This first one I call the Star Guitar for the inlaid stars on its fretboard. It has a spruce top, and the back and sides are curly Koa. You know I love the curly grained woods. It was created by a friend of mine.
He came on the scene later in the project, but stayed on well beyond the end of it. He was another one of us all-purpose builders that could be put to any task and pull it off, but by the end, he was asked to stay on as a caretaker and occupy one of the other houses on the property. Years later the place was sold, and he went with it. As caretaker for the new owners, and he lived there for 20 more years, before old age and infirmity forced him to assisted living, and then took him away.
He was a couple of years older than me, and he had been in the Navy back in 1962. He was the only person I knew who had witnessed a nuclear explosion. He was a young enlisted man in the Navy, aboard a ship setting sail for the Central Pacific. They had shore leave in Honolulu then cruised off 800 miles to the West South West on a training mission. They weren't told of their mission until the last day. They were to witness an atomic explosion near Johnston Atoll. They were guinea pigs to be subjected to direct exposure of the radiation, as they might be during a nuclear battle at sea. There were 31 nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1962. His must have been one of them. There is even a whole category called "Atomic Veterans" who were exposed to blasts as a scientific experiment, sometimes 20 times or more. Phil just experienced the one as far as I know. There was even a test 400 miles off the California coast in May 1962.
Our birthdays were a few days apart and I had been meaning to ask him the details the next time we got together for a birthday lunch. When I called and finally reached him, he was in a memory care facility in Washington State near where his son lives. He had fallen and hit his head I believe, and said he was recuperating. In a couple months, a mutual friend called me and said he was dead.
I did several construction projects with him and he introduced me to one of the four smugglers I've had the pleasure of working for over my short and uneventful lifetime. Phil had known him from the old days in Mendocino. This guy had married his childhood sweetheart after he got out of prison, and had hired Phil and me to remodel their home in West Marin.
He was not doing any kind of illicit business when I worked for him, and was doing very well in his straight gig, but did he have stories to tell. I'm an automatic fact checker when I hear anybody say anything, but most of what he was saying added up, with maybe a little hyperbole. But I was taken aback when he introduced me to a local music legend as a guitar player, quite a stretch, and I had to decline her invitation to sit in with her and her friends, who were real musicians. We had passed a guitar around at the jobsite one day, each taking a turn entertaining the others with a short song. That was it. I held my own there, but I couldn't call myself a guitar player. We more humbly call ourselves guitar owners.
Anyway, Phil had a good gig that covered his rent and utilities, and small projects around the property to earn extra cash. There was plenty of room for a shop space and he set himself the challenge of crafting stringed instruments. He made a couple of dobros, and he was working on a mandolin for years, but his best work was this guitar I bought from him one time when I was feeling flush.
Now Ves Fowler was someone I met at Powell Peralta 1987, a completely different kind of character. This is the guitar he gave me. He called it a "beach guitar"; nylon string, a quality no-name Mexican guitar; warm mellow tone, easy to play. This is the one I play day after day, while the larger steel string Star Guitar hangs on the wall. I'd sell the Star to someone who knew Phil.
We worked side by side for years and in 1990, I became his boss as facility manager for Powell's factory complex in Goleta. It was my sad duty to lay him off at his request because he was having PTSD episodes on the one-year anniversary of his son's horirfic suicide. It was my last act as facility manager. I laid him off, then I laid myself off, and moved to Northern California.
Years later, in 1997, my son Johnny and his pals landed a project to build an over the top indoor Skatepark in Ventura, down the coast and they enlisted me to help pull it off. I looked up Ves, who in his latest evolution sported a cowboy hat, still the same hippy funnyman under that. He in turn helped me pull it off. When we were working there we had a rule that you could treat yourself to a short guitar break whenever the mood struck you, but it was usually Ves or me that did it. He was beginning to fancy himself as a cowboy poet, and even set himself up a few paid music gigs.
I'm keeping this one.