One summer Sunday, when I was around 13 or 14, my parents took me to a picnic where a group of their childhood friends had gathered. Being the only person there under 40, and being at an age where angst comes easily, I spent the first hour or two wishing I was anywhere else while silently juggling my feelings of boredom and superiority.

After lunch was cleared away my father and a couple of his friends arranged half a dozen chairs in a line in front of the picnic tables. Despite my deliberate attempts at ennui I was curious. What fresh torment was to come of this, I wondered. I actually sat up straight when they then carried musical instruments out of the house. Each man made his selection from an assortment of acoustic guitars, violins, and something I recognized from Mrs. Murphy’s music class as a zither. My father had picked up a guitar and was tuning it while I gaped open-mouthed.

For full effect you should understand that until that point in my life my father had never demonstrated or mentioned to me any familiarity or skill with any musical instrument, much less something of complete coolness like the guitar. But there he was, playing bluegrass slide guitar licks with his buds for the next couple hours like he had been doing it his whole life. And they were, as a group, good. Really good.

During the ride home I tried to ask questions about what, and when, and why, but all I learned was that he used to play guitar, still had a guitar, but didn’t play anymore. True to my adolescent nature I obsessed on the topic to the point of annoyance for a few days, bounced from curiosity to resentment and back, then completely forgot about it when another shiny object crossed my sight.

Fast forward a couple months to my birthday. Late in the afternoon after cake and gifts, my father walked into my room carrying an acoustic guitar. A cheap plastic-bodied K-mart guitar, but a guitar nonetheless. He handed it to me, wished me happy birthday, and walked out. For the second time that summer, I was speechless. And conflicted as all get out. The guitar was a toy, to be generous. But my father had given it to me. And I had no clue how to play it. Or tune it. Or anything. But my father had given it to me. So I tried. I talked to my music and band teachers, learned how to tune it, tried to learn a few chords, and spent some of my putting up hay money on a book of Beatles tunes. But no matter what, it still sounded like a toy, and after a few months I gave it up.

I never did get to make music with my father. I never again heard him play. I never found out why he quit. Years after he passed, and I had bought from my mother the house where I grew up, I had a dream. In this dream my father was in my old bedroom, standing by the open door to my closet, and pointing. That morning I dug my way into my room. It had become a storage room after I went off to college, and was filled with boxes of clothes, portable TVs and 8 track players, and other items that should have gone away when they quit being used but hadn’t. After moving some of the piles I opened the closet door to find my high school years staring back at me. Some sport coats and dress slacks, my denim jacket, a couple pair of bell bottom levis with 28 inch waists, all this and tons more were hanging from the rod. This was interesting, but there had to be more. I started pulling things to the front so I could investigate deeper, and in the back of the closet were two guitars. My plastic birthday gift, and next to it my father’s Hawaiian acoustic slide. I took his guitar, and leaving the toy with all the other abandoned memories, shut the door.

My sister recently sent me the attached picture of my parents from their courting days. Hank Williams wanted to be as cool as my father. For our wedding anniversary this year I bought complimentary musical gifts for Barb and me. For her I purchased an EB-3 SG bass. For me, the Epiphone version of the Les Paul Custom guitar. We’ll most likely never sit with our friends out back hammering out some punk riffs and reminiscing about the old days, but that’s okay. We’ll play music together.