The General Loafers

Almost finished!

Tuesday is always busy at the guitar shop. The main reason for this is that Tuesday is the day the "General Loafers" come to hang out. This term is in no way negative, these 60-something gentlemen coined the term themselves. Don actually has the title General Loafer printed on his business cards.

It is pretty adorable to watch them hang out. It is like a club of seven year old boys, but you know, with guns and guitars and they have at least 50 years on those kids. First they have a session of Show & Tell. Today the spotlight was focused on a beautiful old Martin my dad recently procured from George Gruhn in Nashville. Don carefully inserted an endoscope Operation-style into the soundhole to discover that the little single O was hand signed on November 8, 1905. Next, Harrol and Herb bicker a while over the best approach to a repair job or whether one of them (jokingly, I think) scammed the other on an instrument trade. Eventually, they get to work. They all have very specific positions in the shop. Bill 'supervises' and screens calls, my dad periodically consults on Herb's repair work, while Harrol and Don work to move current guitar projects forward.


I just sat and minded my business, watching it snow an unexpected amount outside, and finished shaping the neck of my guitar. Tomorrow I will start spraying it with finish. Yay! It has been a little slow going since there have been several gaps in my productivity due to Thanksgiving and this weird need to hang out with my fiance. Yesterday I drove back up to Rugby from Asheville leaving my sweet baby girl Harper with Nick, which makes me terribly sad, but a downside to the Loafers is that they have encouraged Harper to beg so home she will stay until she forgets that bad habit. Also, I hope Harper will help fill the void I am sure my absence has left in our house. I am just so amazing, Nick is probably having serious withdrawals, what with missing my unnatural, and probably unhealthy, excitement that comes from reading cooking magazines and epicurious.com, and playing the hoola hoop game on the Wii Fit for a lot of unfortunate minutes of the day. If you aren't sure what that spectacle might look like, just imagine me standing in the center of the living room, standing on a small white rectangle hoola hooping without a hoop, and then add in some periodic lithe dives to the left or right to catch an imaginary hoop thrown to me from a Wii character on the TV screen. Anyone would miss those things, right? Yes, I think so too.

The snow today reminded me of my favorite picture of Harper Lee.