|
|
~~~
THE STORY ABOUT THE CHOCOLATE GUITAR
~~~
There came a moment when several factors all added up: I had
some extra money, I was fed up with trying to use a guitar
I'd worn the frets out on, and I found a used Dean
"Z" guitar for sale at "The Music
Gallery" in Highwood, IL, for an inexpensive price. It
was scratched up badly on the backside, as if some kid
punk-rocker'd had the habit of playing while wearing a
leather jacket with a zipper; and/or perhaps a big knobby
buckle on the belt. The lower edge of the fretboard was
damaged; as if somebody had cut it back with a knife,
slightly scalloping it - but, the action and the alignment
of the neck were perfect. The whammy-bar was missing, and
its hole was plugged. The middle pickup missing, too, and
that hole was packed with cushiony foam wedged under the
edge of the silvery metal pick-guard to hold it in place.
The pickup selector switch didn't work on all the settings.
But - it did select between the forward and the rear pickups
and would even work for using both at once. The volume and
tone control knobs worked, too (sort of). I bought it. The
wonderful folk at the Music Gallery were even able to find a
used hardshell electric guitar case laying around in their
basement stockroom, and sell it to me at a price I could
afford. I bought that, too.
When I first met my second wife, I fell head-over-heels in
love. It was embarrassing, distressing, and wonderful, all
at the same time. There was a genuine magic there, when we
were together - it was part of what conviced me to stay with
her despite the misgivings the rational part of my brain
told me I should pay attention to and take action on. A
genuine magic. One of the ways that magic leaked out to
cause mysterious and unexplainable changes in the real
world, was via my Dean "Z" guitar.
We used to sit together at the end of our day, and I'd play and sing songs
for her. It wouldn't be long before the air began to fill with a strong
smell of chocolate. The longer I played for her, the stronger it would get.
Anyone willing to lean close and take a sniff could tell - it was coming
from the guitar - and, it only happened when I'd play for her. It
didn't matter whether the guitar was plugged in, being amplified, or not.
The result was always the same, and it always happened. It was mysterious,
and seemed quite magical. The best guess I could come up with for the sake
of trying to explain the phenomenon, involved the fact that she was a
"choc-aholic". My music, as a gift of love, was triggering
(somehow) generation of a smell she adored - chocolate. I'd had the habit
for years, of naming my instruments - and, given the presence of this
magical mystery, the only name which could possibly fit this black &
white guitar, was "Chocolate".
A couple of years passed, and the magic faded. She rarely asked me to play
for her any more. I was caught up in the daily struggle to support the
family, and fighting to both find & remain employed. She'd gotten
pregnant, had the baby, and began to change into someone I didn't know. It
reached a point where the only time I played my guitar was in the isolation
of my bedroom. She didn't like me making so much noise when she was trying
to watch T.V. - especially, "Judge Judy". (A note for any
married man: Beware the terrible, lurking danger to your person, property,
lifestyle, and family, when the wife develops the habit of watching
"Judge Judy"!!! It's a primary propaganda/training avenue for the
feminazi ideology - and, it won't be long, before the female viewer is
persuaded to do damage to her family, as she learns she can commit evil
without fearing consequences.) Despite the fact that my lover had
been for all intents and purposes lost, the chocolate smell still happened,
although it was nowhere near as strong - only manifesting when I'd play
some song, thinking about the love which now seemed so hard to get back to;
lingering, until I put the guitar away again.
There came a day when she told me she didn't love me any more, and I would
have to leave our home. This was the time she really meant it. She wouldn't
admit it until a couple more months had passed, but she'd developed a love
affair with a violent psychopath she'd met at work, and needed me out of
her way so she could pursue that source of excitement and danger. The very
next time I took out the Dean "Z" guitar to play, there was no
more smell of chocolate. It was completely gone, and conspicuous by its
absence. It was the one thing which really latched down for me the reality
and seriousness of her intent to break up the family - no more magic,
because no more love. The smell of chocolate coming from the guitar has
never happened again.
After I escaped the persecution from Mary and her co-conspirators in Illinois, by leaving the jurisdiction, I
ended up in the U.P. I'd managed to not lose some of my possessions, via the generosity of some friends providing
storage space while I was essentially homeless. Arriving in the U.P., I avoided use of the Dean guitar like the plague
- it was too hurtful a reminder of what I'd lost. When one of my friends came to visit, on vacation, I gave him the
guitar and told him I wanted him to keep it. I never wanted it back. He needed an electric guitar, and I needed to be
rid of the constant reminder of the memories so tightly linked into the Dean. A year later, he came to visit again.
He told me the guitar hadn't been played that year - that, it had been in storage for safekeeping, but he'd brought it
with him just in case I wanted it back. At first, I told him no; I didn't want it. A few days later, right before he
was to leave & return to Illinois, I told him yes. I'd had some time to play it in odd moments, during his visit,
and found to my surprise that those painful memories weren't so painful any more. When he left to return back to
Illinois, the guitar stayed in the U.P. with me.
Some time after that (I'm not sure how long), I decided to put some repairs into the Dean guitar. I felt that doing
so would be one more baby step away from it being so tangled up in memories of Mary (yes, they still hurt a bit).
Fixing the guitar would change the guitar - no longer quite the same instrument I'd entertained my lover with;
different. I paid to purchase a new pickup and have it installed into that center slot which had always been empty.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a whammy-bar to replace the one that was missing. Still in the hole on the
bridge, the guitar repair person found that what I'd thought was some kind of plug was actually the broken-off end
of the previous whammy-bar. (I keep it in my guitar-pick box, now.) The Dean "Z" had been designed with a
rather unique way of connecting the whammy-bar to the bridge, via an end with nylon retainingrings to hold it in
place. A replacement whammy-bar was completely unavailable. and I've never been able to track one down.
After I had the guitar repaired, I took a picture of it so I could send the picture to my friend in Illinois to show
him what it looked like now. I used a digital camera to take the picture, and still had the file hanging around on my
hard drive when I decided to begin a section at the website for my musical instruments. So, here it is:
The small Peavey amp you see in the picture is a simple 10-watt "Decade" practice amp. It has 3 knobs for
ranges of tone control equalization ("LOW", "MID", & "HIGH"). It has 2 knobs for
controlling gain: One marked, "PRE", and one marked "POST". The two input jacks at top left on
the front of the amp are labelled "NORMAL" and "SATURATION". On/off power switch is at top right
on the front of the amp. There are two input jacks on the back, labelled, "12V DC IN" and "PREAMP
OUT". It's also marked near there, as being "NEG GND" - which I suppose, is a note that when connecting
a DC power supply (like from a car battery), you need to have the negative line grounded.
I bought this Peavey amp "used", at "The Music Gallery", in Highwood, IL, because I'd been
having problems w/ scratchiness in the output from my other practice amp (the Crate CR-112). The Peavey works well,
but the "PREAMP OUT" jack on the back doesn't seem to deliver any current when you connect something to it
(headphones, for example). I'm sure the Music Gallery folks didn't realize that, or they would have had it marked
in some manner as having that problem.
Despite the guitar being in good working order, I was till troubled by all the memories which were bound up
into it, and the pain of lost love & magic. I worked out a deal with Rod, a co-managers of the
"Hodag Music Center", in Rhinelander, WI. I bought a Tradition "SG" model guitar which he was
selling (his son's property, not an off-the-rack item). I left the chocolate guitar there, to be sold on consignment.
Explanatory note: Ever since I escaped the wrongful persecutions and violations I suffered in Illinois at
the hands of my ex-wife and her cronies, I'd wanted to be rid of the blatant reminder of lost love which the Dean
"Z" constituted. It's true that the memories bound up in it were good ones - but, they'd been poisoned by
the evil which followed later on. I needed to leave that portion of my life entirely behind me, and the continued
presence of that chocolate guitar repeatedly dragged up memories of the daughter who was kidnapped from me, and the
wife who changed into a ferile, rabid monster. It took a long time to dispose of the guitar, because it wasn't
practical to do so before obtaining the Tradition "SG". I wasn't willing to deprive myself of having access
to that type of musical tool, until I had an acceptable electric guitar as its replacement.
Well, 2 months passed, and it didn't sell. I got fed up with waiting, and brought it back home. Rod had removed the
pick-holder from the face of the guitar, so I had to buy a new one for replacement. A few more months passed. Now,
I had 2 electric guitars; both the Chocolate guitar, and the Tradition SG. I didn't need both, and the memories
bound up into Chocolate still bothered me. I tended to use the SG exclusively, avoiding the Dean Z. As Eileen's
birthday approached in 2006, my mother announced she was taking a trip to see Eileen on her birthday. (Yes, the
kidnapper allows my mother to see Eileen. It's just fatherlessness, depriving Eileen of that resource, that's she's
really insistent on.) It occurred to me that I could "hit 2 birds with one stone". I could be rid of the
memories bound up in the Dean Z, and if things worked out in the right way, see that Eileen received an electric
guitar setup as a birthday present. (I've never heard of a kid who wouldn't be absolutely thrilled to be given an
electric guitar!) I gave the Dean Z with its hard shell case, a new guitar strap, the Peavy practice amp, a guitar
stand, an instrument cable, and a chromatic tuner to my mother. I told her it was now her property, and she could do
whatever she wanted with it. I made the suggestion that it would make a good birthday present for Eileen. The reason
I did it in that manner, was that I needed (and, still need) to protect myself against criminal aggression from Mary.
I needed to guarantee that Mary couldn't use gift-giving from me to Eileen as ammunition to commit another round of
court-rape against me. (If you've paid attention during the past 15 years, then you're aware of the multiple true
horror stories about fathers who give their kidnapped kids birthday presents.) My mother did as I suggested. She took
the Dean Z & the Peavy practice amp down into Illinois with her, and gave it to Eileen as a birthday present.
Note: It occurred to me later, that I never did photograph the black "Ibanez" hard-shell guitar case I
bought with & used for storing the Dean "Z" in. It would have been appropriate to have posted a photo
of it onto this page. I can't rectify that oversight, now,... I'll have to be satisfied with merely placing mention
on this page, that the case was there, what type of case it was, and its fate - that, it's currently down there in
Illinois with Eileen.
The only items I kept, from the setup I had with the Dean "Z", were the yellow guitar strap and
"Cry Baby" wah-wah pedal you see in the photo. The reason I kept the pedal is obvious, but the strap deserves
some explanation. I kept it for two reasons: 1) Because I really like that bright sun-yellow strap, and yellow straps like
that are very hard to find. And, 2) Because Mary never saw it - that strap has no associative memories of that
monster, bound up into it. So, I still have both the wah pedal, and the yellow guitar strap. The strap is being used with my
Tradition "SG". (Eileen was given a different strap.)
|
|
IN CONCLUSION
I hope you've enjoyed my little story about the history of
my "Chocolate" guitar! If I discover at some point
that there's more to tell, I'll add it onto this page.
~~~
Scruffy Eagle
~~~
|
|
|
|
|
|