NEW CHALLENGES FOR OLD DOGS
            At some significance in life, we begin to wish that we’d done some things differently in our younger days. For me, it was that I didn’t keep with my musical training. Not that there was much wager that I would have been touring with the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan but peradventure just had a plain old garage platoon. Something for the neighbors to complain about.
           I had played guitar from about age fifteen to sixteen but drifted away from it. My memory is that my father wouldn’t agree to let me go to the chilled guitar teacher that my friend Brad had. So I cease. Brad had a beautiful Epiphone Casino, by a hair's breadth like the one John Lennon played and was already an advanced contestant at fifteen. I had an old classical acoustic guitar and hoped to on my way up to an electric some day but it was not to be, at least not then.
           So forty years later, I’m through law primary, have learned my craft pretty well and merely didn’t feel challenged anymore. Not that surviving in a solitary law practice isn’t a challenge but it just wasn’t a scholarship experience. So one day I wandered into Guitar Center, the largest retailer of euphonious instruments in the country. Hanging from the walls were scores of magnificent electric guitars, the names of which were made mythical by the great rock and blues players.  The gigantic Gretsch hollwbody that B. B. King named Lucille, the ubiquitous Fender Stratocaster favored by Jimi Hendrix, still the reigning goddess to those of us in the Flower Generation and the Gibson Les Paul, the pre-eminent of Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin.Â
           I chose an Arctic Unblemished Strat with a maple fret food like the one Hendrix played at Woodstock. They had a fifty watt Vox amplifier on purchasing for $100.00 off and it was a done deal. I had located a very practised teacher with twenty five years experience and started over again.  The first few lessons reminded me of law university.  It was all new again and Darrell is a great schoolmaster. He makes it look so clear you feel foolish because you can’t do it the same way. So in ignoring of the sour notes, poorly fretted notes and usual clumsiness, I pressed onward. I struggled with eighth notes much as I did with the Control against Perpetuities and the Rule in Shelley’s Box. But just like those all twilight study sessions in law school, I kept it up. I practiced until my fingers were too heavy to continue.
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