OMG! (Oh-so Many Guitars!)

When we left home, Mike left his guitar there rather than subject it to the vagaries of travel. However, he planned from day 1 to see if he could find a cheap guitar here, then leave it for future generations of college kids to abuse during their stays in subsequent years. After all, one hardly wants to lose those hard-won finger calluses.

Early on he asked about second-hand stores or flea-markets, or whatever might be a source for this kind of a cheap beater, and the RAs at the school handed him one from the corner. But it was too beaten a beater. The upper bridge was so severely broken that the high E string either dangled or was slipped onto the bridge next to the B - pretty difficult playing conditions if one wants all 6 strings. Someone mentioned Esse Music in Montebelluno, and someone else said, "Oh, yeah!"

So we took the beater to see if it could be repaired, and  headed to Esse Music. After one blown attempt to find the place - it looks like a large abandoned factory, so we thought it was just a large, abandoned factory - we followed the stream of arriving customers into a back building that looks like an airplane hangar. In through a hall, turn the corner and:

 If we were Italian, the appropriate utterance would have been, "Mamma mia!" (they really do say that), but not having the proper reflexes or training, we just stopped in our tracks and went slack-jawed. Both of us, simultaneously. I think they should have a video camera there to record folks' initial reactions, because the place is truly astonishing. There are thousands of guitars there! In every configuration, every style, new, used, cheap, outlandishly expensive, and every point in between.

One of the guys there speaks some English, lucky for us, and he directed us to everything we needed. The beater is in getting fixed, and Mike has a new, cheap guitar! It's a new Yamaha and has surprisingly good sound for its cheaphood.

There are a couple of repercussions, so to speak, of this action. One is that there are several students who play guitar and were in the market for a similar kind of travel instrument, so Mike took 4 of them back to Esse Music this Wed and three of the four got themselves new axes. Happy students.

The other bit of fall-out is that a couple of those students are pretty dang good. One young woman, Sarah Parker (I'm dropping her name so I can say, "I knew her when she played a cheap guitar in Italy" someday when she's famous), plays well enough, but also writes some very good songs and has a truly lovely voice and style. She had actually managed to play the beater -pre-repair - sufficiently well out in the courtyard of the dorms that kids would hang out the windows and applaud her. She said, "I'm wondering if this might be dangerous to do - I've had three proposals of marriage so far." Being really pretty probably helped on that count. At any rate, she is one of the proud new guitar owners, and she and other students - and Mike! - are now being recruited for a talent show. It'll be in late November, just before the Thanksgiving break. Thus is the way of life with Mike: things happen. I bet you'll hear more on this one in time.

Mike with his new guitar in our apartment. He's happily rebuilding his calluses and practicing regularly. Yay! It's so nice to have music in our home again.