April 13, 1912

Maple neck with gold Waverly tuners.

I wish right now was not the first time I have had to sit down and write you a story for the past week and a half. Trying to get this guitar finished without a hitch has proven to be a bit of a difficulty. This entire entry could be about how to spray finish, and then how one can sand through said finish, and then how to respray finish some more, and then how frustrating it is to sand that bit flat only to sand through in another nearby spot, then having to respray and rebuff that section...and so on. My dad believes that a heavy coat of finish on a guitar can hinder its sound when all is said and done, so ideally each layer you spray on a guitar should be sanded down as thin as possible without sanding through it to the wood. It is a thin line between too heavy and too thin though and achieving that balance has proven to be quite difficult. I spent most of the past few days attempting to balance on that fine line, but I ended up falling over several times in the process...Though, after all of that I managed to get the tuners on at 11:30 tonight. Yay!

Finished body. After 7 coats of finish...

Does this look electrocuted to you? 

Last Friday was my Granny's 100th birthday. I know that if she were here she wold be so proud to be 100 years old. I remember once my dad and aunts were out of town, and a family friend passed away so I came to drive Granny to their funeral. She was ninety at the time, and each person we met, the minister, everyone, she would say, "Hi, good to see you! I'm 90!" So, last week I cut some lilacs that are currently in full bloom on the bush in our yard, tied them with some of the ribbon that we use to strengthen the sides of a guitar and brought those to her grave. I like to think she would have appreciated those just as much as a fancy bouquet I plucked from a plastic bucket at a supermarket.

I also made a strawberry cake covered in pink icing that I dotted on with a pastry bag, though when I debuted it after some difficult detail work, my dad said it looked like it had been electrocuted. Anyway, I enjoyed thinking of her, and remembering her on her birthday. Hopefully next week I will be coherent enough think of a more exciting and detailed story for you. It turns out that working 12+ hours in the shop every day seems to be detrimental to my creative writing skills... I will let these pictures tell this one.

Easter Dinners

Spring is on the way!!

Easter has always been a big holiday for my dad's family. Every Easter Sunday the table would be filled with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, green beans, baked beans, deviled eggs, and of course, Granny's delicious potato salad. For dessert my Granny would make bird's nests. These confections consisted of green jello, cool whip, shredded coconut, and jelly beans. She would take great care to arrange all of the ingredients to resemble a bird's nest filled with colored eggs. After dinner (which happened at lunchtime), we would head outside to hunt for dyed hardboiled eggs, typically finding them stuffed in drain pipes, green ones nestled in the tree out front, and sometimes under the porch steps. We weren't exceptionally creative in our hiding spots I suppose...

My favorite part of Easter in Rugby though, was the scavenger hunt the Easter Bunny would provide in lieu of a basket filled with green plastic 'grass', chocolate bunnies, and Jelly Bellys. The first year I remember spending Easter with my dad instead of my mom, I was maybe 5 years old. I woke up to find a note instead of a chocolate bunny, which was all I wanted in the world. It told me that there would be a series of clues that would lead me to an Easter treat. I don't remember all of the notes, however, I do remember one that suggested I search for the next clue in my dad's shoe. (The Easter Bunny is quite adept at rhyming, if you didn't know.) I remember he shooed me away from him, incredulous that anything other than his foot would be occupying his brown boot. But lo! After poking around a bit, there it was, tied with a little red ribbom, tucked into the boot's tongue. I thought, wow that Easter bunny is pretty dang smooth if he managed to slip some paper in my dad's shoe without him noticing...I might not have been the most clever 5 year old in the world, but it was so fun. The search culminated at a crafts fair on White Top Mountain, where my dad was scheduled to play later in the day. Leaning against an amplifier sat a white fabric bunny with exceptionally long ears, dressed in a red and black checked dress. It had my name on it. I don't know if I have ever felt so special, the Easter Bunny left me a present in front of a hundred people! I only recently found out that that first scavenger hunt was the result of my dad having forgot it was Easter and needed to buy some time in order to find a chocolate bunny for me. Little did he know it would spark an Easter tradition.

Me, Shirleen, and Harper on Easter several years ago.

Many years afterwards, the Easter Bunny would write me cryptic notes, sending me over to the spooky barn next door, down to our cobweb-ridden basement, to search in a box full of snake skeletons, over to Granny's cellar. I should have known my dad had something do with it when snakes became involved in the game but I just enjoyed every second of it. I remember one Easter I was sent to the newly renovated attic where, in the farthest corner, sat a huge, sneering, rubber rat wearing a diamond necklace. Every time I put on that necklace, I think about that rat, and what I had to go through to get to it, and mostly how much I love my dad. Even though it began as a means to correct an oversight, the scavenger hunts are something I cherish, and a tradition I plan to continue with my children, if I ever have any that is. Unfortunately, Harper is unable to read, though I do sometimes hide her toys for her to find. She seems to enjoy that game very much.


Last weekend my aunts Shirleen and Pat, my uncle Max, and Pat's sister Lib, who I consider an aunt as well, came to have Easter dinner with me. Several people have decided to come visit my dad for Easter weekend so we figured it would be the only chance we would have to be with just our family. It is amazing how rare those opportunities are these days. Like the random nights in the shop that I have with  just my dad, I cherish family dinners just as much, though they seem to be becoming less and less frequent. I wish very much that my dad had been in town to join us for this past dinner, but to me, it was just the same as family dinners at Granny's house, only Shirleen and Pat made the birds nest desserts, taking just as much care to create them as Granny would have.

All By Myself!

This afternoon, with aching thumbs and tired eyes, I sat back and looked at the compilation of wood that is now the body of a quadruple ought guitar. It was even more satisfying because, with the exception of a couple short visits from passers by, I was alone in the shop all day and had to make decisions, fix mistakes, and glue with conviction all on my own. Having my dad as a safety net is really comforting, but it is much more empowering to say that, for sure, I did this work alone, and it ended up meeting my dad's high standards. So far this week, with having to work on my own much of the time, I am more sure than normal that it is not mistake choosing to learn this craft instead of pursue a career in environmental law.

Monday while my dad was in Marion all day running errands, I looked around the shop and found several pieces of spruce from which to fashion the braces for the top of the guitar. After I dug those out from under several layers of sawdust I consulted my "Guitar Notes" (an 8 page word document that contains step by step instructions for making a Henderson guitar complete with side notes and tips that I made during my third guitar, and have been adding to ever since. As I have mentioned before, am a J. I just can't help such things.) Anyway, thanks to those notes, I managed to saw out a perfect X brace on the first try without anyone providing backseat sawing advice.

Yesterday was a fun Tuesday, as most all are, but there were fun Tuesday visitors to accompany the usual General Loafers. While the shop was crammed with people, I stayed in my corner and shaved my top braces and fitted the top onto the body. Unfortunately my camera's battery has been depleted of energy and I seem to have left its charger in a wall socket somewhere, therefore I am unable to document the progress of this guitar until I either locate said charger or order a new one. My dad's good friend Tom Watts, one of yesterday's visitors, took some great pictures for me (and you all) so luckily all is not left to your imagination! (All of the ones from today's post are courtesy of Tom.)

Getting some pointers. Haha. Pun intended. 

Today I made myself a list of tasks, the J-ness coming out again, and of course crossed them off as I completed each one. First I had to remove the newly glued together body from the form, and route the excess wood from the top and back. Then I measured and routed the space for the end piece that covers the joint of the sides at the base of the guitar. After that I made rosewood binding; it has to be pre-bent so it fits snuggly around the body, and then routed the space for the binding and the top inlay.  While routing the back of the body, I did not readjust the router correctly to account for the extra angle and ended up with a space that was too deep for the width of the binding. After a momentary freak out I decided, well that is ok, I will just add a couple of thin black and white lines between the binding and the body to fill the void. That task took some finagling, but I ended up supergluing the black and white veneers to the binding and gluing it to the binding together. Finally, I sanded all of that inlay flush with the rest of the body. It probably took you a few minutes to read all of that, but it took me about eight and a half hours to carry it out, including mess ups, freak outs, and a couple of ball throwing breaks for Harper. Oh and my cousin Leah called to chat a while which was a really exciting, welcomed break.

Check out my sweet braces! Harper approves.

View of the back in the form.

Signing the top. 

So that is what happened today. When my dad got home I was so tired I actually let him convince me to go to the "Log Cabin" for dinner. If you aren't aware, the Log Cabin Country Store is a gas station on the corner of route 58 and 16 with some booths attached and a grill in the back room. Their specialties are the likes of chicken fried steak, chicken and dumplins (that is how it was spelled it on the dry erase board advertising the specials we passed on the way in) and vealsteak. I don't know what that last thing is, but I guarantee it would make my body incredibly angry if I ingested it. Anyway, that type of cooking is not my scene, but my dad likes it, and rather than make him a nice tofu and broccoli stir fry, I indulged him and we went. As a compromise though, after eating our matching chicken fillet sandwiches, I made him take a walk with me and Harper to downtown Rugby (the corner of our street and Rugby Road) and he didn't even complain! It was a really nice, though rare, evening with just us.

Clay Lunsford

It has been a productive few days in the shop. I chose some lovely curly maple for my new project: a 0000 style guitar that I should have started weeks ago. It was ordered by a fellow who lives in New Mexico, so the warm humid weather we have been having lately probably won't help with the finished guitar's transition to its new home.

Curly maple back, before I glued in the backstrip.

The best part of working in the shop is having incredibly talented musicians popping in and out all the time providing a live soundtrack for my workday. Over the past few days the incredibly talented musician to visit us was Clay Lunsford. Clay is a hilarious, amazing thumb picker who provided us with awesome music and great company.  My dad is always saying Clay isn't right in the head. That may be the case, but he sure is fun to have around! While I listened to beautiful melodies float from the soundhole of his guitar I worked to glue kerfing onto the curly maple sides. For a while my dad's good friend Greg Cornett took a break from wet sanding his new banjo rim to whistle several amazing tunes.

Along with the incredible music, there was also some entertaining conversation. "I am getting my britches dirty!" Clay complained after several hours of sanding the Brazilian Rosewood sides on the cutaway guitar that will so . "Well, why'd you wear such nice britches! You need you some Wranglers like I got on." My dad retorted. "Well this is what was laid out for me!" Clay answered. He was wearing black slacks that seemed to attract dust the way all the ladybugs in my house find death in our light fixtures.

I love to be around when my dad meets someone who's talent he truly admires. Every time a new visitor walked through the door, my dad would exclaim, "Have you met Clay? Clay! Play them Dixie and Yankie Doodle at the same time!" And Clay would obediently launch into an incredible rendition of both songs simultaneously. Really, this guy is amazing, though I am having trouble articulating just how much so. Gail and Tom Watts provided this video that demonstrates. If you look real hard, at the beginning of the video, my dad gets that incredulous look in his eye when he is truly appreciating talent.

The Old Shop

I don't remember all that much about my dad's old shop, because a room full of machines that could easily sever any number of my small body parts was not the ideal environment for a young curious girl such as myself. I remember the space seemed filled with magic things, like pieces of wood that were actually fancy new modes of transportation, the likes of Marty McFly's hover skateboard. I now know that my 'skateboard' is a mahogany neck blank, and it probably wasn't the best idea to be standing on it, using the angled headstock to spin around on, but that was my toy. I was very small, but still, maybe don't mention that one to my dad.

Anyway, the old shop, I think, was larger than the current brick structure next to my dad's house but things seem to have shrunk as I have grown up so it is hard to say for sure. I remember it had two rooms and one of them did not have any insulation so it was always freezing or super hot and the other was more like an apartment space, complete with counters and a kitchen space. The floor was covered in an unfortunate taupe and brown linoleum in a circular 1970s type pattern I have (luckily) not seen anywhere else.

My dad said that for many years he rented the larger, uninsulated room for $25 per month from Vivian Osborne. If you have visited my dad's house, it is very likely that you have passed what used to be Osborne's store, and is now the Citgo station that sits on the side of highway 58, about a quarter of a mile before you turn onto Tucker Road. Vivian owned that store, as well as my dad's shop building. A man lived in the apartment space attached to the larger room until my dad was able to take over that space as well.

The main things I remember about being there at the shop were located outside. Next door sat the Rugby Rescue squad building. Though ambulances rarely rushed out with their lights and sirens on, it was always an excitement to go over and look at the large ominous trucks resting in their spaces. Across the street from the shop was Genelle's house. She was the mother of one of my dad's friends, so she was similar in age to my Granny. She would happily oblige, just as my grandmother and Katherine would, and let me intrude on her and play with her things while my dad was working. Another activity I enjoyed when I visited the shop was dragging my dad outside to the banks of Wilson Creek and insist that he help me search for crawdads. We would creep along the creek bed and overturn fist sized rocks, smoothed from years of water running over them. I would always love finding crawdads, but I refused to touch them. Even though they had tiny pincers that probably couldn't do too much to the tough skin on your fingertips, it was just as stressful as anticipating a shot, which in hindsight doesn't hurt that badly but beforehand you are pretty sure it is going to be awful.

Anyway, my dad's favorite part of the crawdad hunt was trying to get someone to hold them. He would mess with them until they were sufficiently irritated, what with being plucked from their houses and then poked and prodded, so typically they were quite eager to grab ahold of whatever predator was afflicting them. I knew to steer clear, but one trip to the creek, we invited some other kids and their mom out with us. Being the city slicker she was, the mom naively reached out and took an irate crawdad from my dad's expert grasp, and it promptly latched onto her finger. After quite a while of wailing and flinging her hand about, the poor crawdad released her and was launched back into the creek, to hopefully find his rock house again. Ah memories...

The thing that I hold most dear about Rugby is that it is very easy to see history. Things aren't quickly changing or developing into gated communities or a Rite Aid on the corner. The same things that have been there forever are still there. The spot in the road on my grandmother's land where my dad nonchalantly pointed out to me where he killed a quail with a hammer is still there, complete with the fence he said he was building at the time. I think that is really neat, to see the landmarks that go along with the stories. Genelle's house still sits across the road from the old shop, the Rugby Rescue Squad building is pretty much the same, though I think they painted it blue recently. The Wilson Creek has babbled through its bed for who knows how long. Those things make it easy to remember my childhood and to stay connected with my family's past.

I came home one time, several years ago, looked down Rugby Road as I passed, and noticed something weird. Something different. Upon closer inspection, my dad's shop had been torn down and the space adjacent to the squad building was just a grass lot. Kind of like nothing had ever been there. It was scary and odd to me. Things like that just don't happen in Rugby. The new shop, which my dad built just a hop, skip, and a really small jump from his house is great, and has accrued a history all its own. If ever it is taken apart though, someone will find the handprints of a 9 year old girl, forever pressed into the cement in its attic.

Wayne picking outside of the old Henderson Guitar Shop. Note the awesome sign painted by my very talented mom!