I ain’t sure I told y’all but one of the things I love most to do in this world is pick a guitar. I just love the way it feels, the way it sounds and the happy way them old strings sound when I play a few chords of a hymn or an old country song. Uncle Muddy got it for me a few years back, saying “I just got a notion that I could see and hear you picking one.” Big Daddy Hegelund played one and everybody swears he could rip the strings off one. And I guess it just runs in my family.

I was gonna tell y’all about my own guitar first, but I wanted to tell you about Big Daddy and Double Mamaw and when they first got married. Big Daddy played music every time and anywhere he could make a dollar, or gather up an audience. He was that good on the guitar; however Double Mamaw got tired of him always being off at the juke joint when he wasn’t at work and one day she told him about it in no uncertain terms.

He told Uncle Muddy, who relayed this story to us kids, with Double Mamaw nodding her head and giggling the whole time. You see, Big Daddy didn’t drink much, but when he did tie one on he was a knucklehead. He fell in love with every dog, every cat and every stranger he met, like they were the best of friends. Oftentimes he would be gone til three in the morning in the first few years of his marriage to Double Mamaw, and she got mighty tired of sitting up tending to the stove and his cold plate of food.

He was not drinking this one night, and he actually had come home early one Friday night for a change, and sat down to eat. And Double Mamaw was hopping mad, real mad because she had stewed about this problem until it had “plum ate her up” inside. He finished his food, sat down on the couch and started picking a soft tune on his guitar. Double Mamaw walked in, without a word and took his guitar and broke it over his head. Out of the blue. Kawham! She took it by the neck and broke it hard, “right upside his durn head.”

She had told him at that time, “All I hear is that dang guitar blar blar blar everytime you come home drinkin’ with this one or that one, and I am dog tired sick of hearing it.” He looked shocked and told her “Well you didn’t have to break it over my durn head! Foolish woman!” She said, “Then don’t come home blar blar blaring a guitar no more and we won’t have ought to talk about it then, will we?” He got pretty mad, and stormed off and slept in the toolshed.

Double Mamaw said they didn’t speak to one another for a week. She didn’t cook anything for him either, she was still so hot about it. She took the pieces of that guitar and throwed them in the woods, and I guess that was the last anybody ever heard of Big Daddy playing a guitar for anybody. Folks said he would still borrow one from time to time, and play a lively tune out and about, but he never brought another one home and he never drank a single drop of alcohol around Double Mamaw ever again.

So, that leads us to my own story about my guitar. Shady went in my room one day and saw my guitar on its little stand, with the little clip capo on the end and the small electric tuner Uncle Muddy got for me to tune it with. Shady started strumming the strings and all of a sudden one of the bottom strings just popped! Popped right off in his hand, broke, and he was not supposed to be in there doing that anyway.

Shady came to me and the rest of the family at the dinner table, and obviously had been crying – a lot. He confessed to me what he had done, and he just knew I was going to eat him alive because he was told by Mamaw to never touch my guitar. Mamaw looked at me and said, “What is to be done Pete? It’s your guitar and the little one knows the rules around here, we don’t mess with other people’s stuff, and we know that is a special guitar to you.”

Normally I would have taken the occasion to wind him up, and say a bunch of big things but something came over me this time. “Mamaw,” i said softly, “I ain’t worried about no guitar string and I know he wasn’t supposed to be in there, but those strings were getting a little rusty and I was about to put a new set on anyway. I think he is upset enough as it is; maybe that’s enough of a lesson for him? I am sure you agree?”

Now Shady’s mouth fell open and his eyes got wide, because he knows exactly how I am about my stuff, especially that guitar. I grabbed him by his arm and gave him a big old hug and said, “Well I think I will just give him a head scrub noogie as his punishment this time.” Then I chased him down the hall with both of us laughing and scrubbed his head with my fist in a good rough super noogie.” We both came back to the table, and I swear I saw Mamaw wipe a tear from her eye. She said softly “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.”

So that my friends is my own guitar story, and I hope you enjoyed it. A little brother means way more than a rusty guitar string I think. Don’t you agree?