Lessons from a Stone

My Favorite Quote

Landmark Kitty Genovese Case – Copilot Summary

For as long as I can remember, the above quote has been among my favorites. There is a small sampling of essentially the same message but delivered using slightly different words and arrangements, accredited to a number of authors as the centuries have passed. Note that by the time you get to the last iteration of the quote on this page, that it is credited to “Author Unknown”. “Time waits for no one” is another favorite of mine.

If you take these two favorite, well-known quotes and you then view the Copilot summary just below of what shook the nation to its core, the Kitty Genovese case is one that should have left most Americans to contemplate how they may have responded, had they been there amongst the 38 onlookers bearing witness directly or hearing the horrible spectacle taking place. I don’t care to recall the exact number of times that she was stabbed, but it was some ungodly total. If you look to history for examples, you’ll find that this kind of a good versus evil occurrence is commonplace, but it is rarely as severe as to what took place on the day when Kitty Genovese, a young New York bartender was brutally attacked and killed just outside her Queens, New York apartment. The term “Bystander Effect” was coined by the various psychiatrists who studied the case in detail. Not one individual in the 38 who witnessed the horrid crime did anything to stop it, including making a simple phone call to the closest responding police department.

It happened in 1964, just three years after I was born, but I well remember the case because I took a college level Psych 101 class in 9th or 10th grade and clearly recall the sickening feeling it left in my gut. I could not wrap my young head around the fact that this had been something real and distinctly recall thinking that the story couldn’t possibly be true. It bothered me to such an extent that I still think about it today, some 50 years after first learning about it.

I remember making a promise to myself that I would never sit back and watch something similar occur on what would be “my watch”. It has been my sad experience in going through life and being the only person among others with enough temerity to engage myself in attempting to bring whatever it may have been to a halt and putting an end to things before they’d had the chance to gain momentum. I had put myself in harm’s way somewhere between ten and twelve times before I turned fifty, and was still quite fit and schooled enough in fighting to tip the scales, never sustaining an injury more substantial than a few cuts and bruises, and, the “road rash” that invariably occurs when a fight goes to the pavement. Sure, some torn clothing or a hole in shirt, jacket, or jeans that hadn’t been there just ten minutes before. I have done these things in direct defense of people (family and friends, my daughter, or people that I came across who were (for whatever reason) disadvantaged and incurring the collective wrath of as many as five people bullying that individual who had found themselves alone and surrounded by some really bad people. I have also done these things in defense of myself, outnumbered by people bearing weapons, including guns and knives, in a failed attempt to rob or intimidate me, and during situations where I’ve come across animals who were clearly being harmed. I have never walked away having gotten “the short end of the stick “.

It has been my experience that one man armed only with serious conviction and a determined and dominant way, combined with the knowledge of having good on his side can inflict enough damage that the evil-doers don’t have a chance to respond as a group or, better yet, have a complete change of heart. This is based on the theory that when things quickly turn ugly, individual members of a group tend to lose their “pack mentality” and turn to saving themselves. Further, any group is only as powerful as the individuals it is composed of.

In my 65 years on this planet as an astute observer and a person who is always prepared to “do the right thing” in terms of getting the truly daunting but instantaneous (without warning) things done, I abhor the “turning away from trouble” mentality. I believe that putting ones own safety above that of others has become the default setting for many people but a few of us are born with the instinctive drive to defend and protect (even if it means putting ourselves directly in harm’s way) those who were members of my “tribe” or anyone who was in dire need of help. I believe this is because in our newfound individual anonymity, we no longer belong to tribes or even tightly knit communities and we look to others (such as the brave members of our military or our closest police department) to put their lives on the line on our behalf. Trouble is, when evil shows up unannounced, these warriors cannot be there for us simply because they are nowhere nearby, and therefore, it is up to those of us who feel the “calling” not to turn from it, but to cultivate it. To think various situations through often long before they happen and to train ourselves with the ability to “react” with virtually no time to think and barely enough time to even remotely assess the danger, with the full extent often hidden from view. We are talking about very brief moments in time, usually just seconds. While the masses turn away and help is nowhere to be found, those few of us who carry this primitive urge must do what our instincts and prior experiences tell us to do.

I’m not here to train people on how best to handle themselves. It is fully up to the individual. It is extremely complex and takes years of forethought and personal experience to know what works best for any given person. This is something that you have continually prepared yourself for over the course of your life. If you are youthful and strong, all the better, but that is not the only criteria required for a successful outcome which means only that you brought the occurrence to an end and that you’re able to get up without major injury and walk away all the more wise from the encounter.

Just think about what I’ve said, for it is based on some of the greatest truths of all. We see and hear about people who step-up in these moments and they become immediate celebrities (celebrated people) and almost always are given the label of “hero”. If a particular event is caught on video (which is likely with almost everyone carrying a smart phone and the millions of closed-circuit cameras seemingly stationed everywhere these days) it goes viral. I suppose this is as it should be in modern times, but fame should never enter into the running algorithm maintained in your innermost brain. If you have the greater good in mind, it tends to be of serious interest when we are still young, long before adulthood drags us down with all of its “more important” responsibilities and diversions (like social media and hollow friendships), while we can still discern the differences between who we aspire to be and who we become.

There are roughly eight billion human beings weighing the world down. Don’t you feel a deep yearning to aim higher, not only with the subject at hand, but in the context of every choice you make on your journey through life. We are here but once. By making choices that are steeped in sound values, you will put yourself in a place that when your time is up, you will have lived honorably and are therefore without regret. None of this is intended to motivate people to go out and “look for trouble”. Doing so would result in becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution. I’m simply saying that when and if trouble (bad, evil) crosses your path, do your best to move steadfastly into it with some sort of strategy in mind for getting to the other side, where the problem has transcended from the present and become part of the past.

Back to the Quote

“The only way for evil to exist is if otherwise good men turn away”. Author Unknown

This is my own version of a wordier quote that delivers the same message. It has been used in a variety of forms for centuries, so I am comfortable with using fewer words to deliver precisely the same message. Originally thought to have been written for JFK (I’ve also read FDR in a speech made during WWII) and a preacher at the turn of the last century, then traced to the 1800’s to Sir Edmond Burke, but there are references which precede biblical times. Versions of it have been found in the works of classical literature and both Roman and Greek philosophers coined their own.

I’ve spent hours digging into the subject myself and was unable to find any single source. In my opinion, it’s such a basic concept (Good versus Evil) to ponder that I don’t believe there is just one author. So I took the liberty of using “Author Unknown”.

Guitar Pick Mania

Things seem to be changing quickly for one piece of gear that many guitar players take for granted: The lowly guitar pick.

A Few Examples of Boutique Guitar Picks Credit: HoneyPicks, Charmed Life, D’Addario

By now many of you are probably aware of the burgeoning market for “Boutique” picks which burst on to the scene and broke the price barrier from around a buck per pick (we’d buy ’em by the bag of twelve or twenty) to over $40 per unit when “Blue Chip” picks came out five or six years ago, using some high-tech proprietary material borrowed from the high tech and aerospace industries.

Not to be out-done, all sorts of entrepreneurial-types have joined in the fight for market share. New materials such as galilith/casein which is derived from a protein found in milk. Other pick makers are using acrylic, glass, epoxy resin and the list goes on to include graphite, kevlar, and carbon fiber. While the big name manufacturers such as Fender, Clayton, and Dunlop are still using tried and true materials like celluloid, Ultex, Tortex, nylon, PVC (and other forms of inexpensive plastic), they are also launching their own pricey picks (like Dunlop and it’s “Prime Tone” line and DAddario selling its branded casein). The big brand’s new picks run from around $6 to $20 per unit. The new boutique brands claim theirs to be superior and more costly to make (often, one at a time by hand). These picks run the gamut from around $20 to over $60, per. These alternative picks have many of their own designs and dimensions. Most offer standard sizes like Fender’s 351 teardrop and other sizes that mesh with what we’re accustomed to seeing, along with some of their own.

I’ve played dozens of picks over the years and experimented with both the feel and tone. My go-to pick is the yellow Dunlop Tortex material, shown above (twice) in the Fender “351” shape, medium-heavy thickness. These picks were bought well before the boutique pick craze began a few years ago. I’m currently awaiting two from Honey Picks (photo at the top) and their proprietary”Bee Keeper” material “found deep within the Appalachian Mountains”. Seriously, that’s all the information their website supplies. These come in at $20 each, or about middle of the pack in price. I’m quite curious to play them against some others in my collection, including my Tortex picks. For you non-guitar slingers who might be reading this, the pick is typically the very inexpensive tool that connects you to your very expensive guitar and, there are discernable differences in tone and playability moving from pick to pick. You have a hard, plastic feeling material striking the strings, so things like stiffness and density come into play (NPI). This all makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why, by chance, would a more expensive, more difficult to resource material inherently sound better? After all, this is the way this whole thing is being spun. Put differently, there’s certainly some good marketing going on here in planting just the seed of the idea into the brains of the guitar playing public, and allowing the idea to germinate and grow.

I will do my best to give these new picks a fair and impartial chance at romancing my “well-seasoned” set of musical ears. After my experiment, I will report my findings back here. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to go out and purchase a dozen picks from the bigger names in the business and expand the experiment to include them. However, if these Honey Picks do the job and, particularly if they do it well, I’ll likely buy more from the various brands and, again, report back here to amend this article.

The biggest change that I’m finding (other than a good case of sticker shock!) is with the depth or thickness which typically runs from around 1.4 mm to 3 mm, or greater. The points are thinned and “speed beveled” for a smooth attack, but the part you hold remains thick. The original premise (as with Blue Chip) was to get as close as possible to the sonic qualities of genuine tortoiseshell which was all the rage until the Hawksbill sea turtle (not a tortoise) all but reached its demise. The misnomer over the two species has been in place and is only now, decades later, being corrected. The turtle had been hunted for centuries by indigenous peoples all over the world but when the Victorian Era came into full swing over a hundred years ago, everything from lampshades to women’s brush and mirror handles, and later, guitar pickguards and picks, pushed the turtle to its limits and a worldwide hunting and manufacturing ban was put into play. At what was the eleventh hour, Hawksbill turtle would get a permanent stay of execution.

It took some time, but with the advent of celluloid (thought to be very close to tortoiseshell in looks and feel), guitar manufacturers again had their pickguard material of choice. On it went for pick guards over the last eighty years, but it is now rumored that there is a coming shortage of celluloid. When fine Italian celluloid hit the market in the 1950’s, it was being manufactured for all sorts of markets and, among them were not only beautiful looking pickguards to protect the area of the guitar, whether electric or acoustic, that is located below where the sound hole would be. The other guitar-related market was for the guitar pick. One of the prime selling points for celluloid was that the new picks sounded and felt very much like the original tortoiseshell picks of yore. Once celluloid became established as the new market go-to material, much as is the case now, companies began throwing all sorts of materials at their own brand of pickguards, from various forms of plastic, nylon, PVC, Ultex, and dozens of others all with the claim of sounding much like genuine tortoiseshell. I think what happened was that some of these materials didn’t sould like tortoiseshell at all, though they did have a pleasant tone when played. The benchmark for “sounding like tortoiseshell” sort of fell by the wayside and it became more about how these materials sounded relative to one another. Dunlap became the leader in introducing alternative materials to celluloid. One of the new “boutique” materials is epoxy resin. You can buy a resin pickguard todoy but it will be from some guy making them in his garage. As far as I know, no one manufacturer has come along to make them on a production scale.

There are a couple of things that make the validity of a $50-plus pick sounding and performing any better than the vast array of a bit suspect. I live in the middle of nowhere but have ordered and now had the chance to test several of these new picks for myself. Aside from any opinions that I provide here, there are currently any number of internet reviews and YouTube comparisons if you haven’t already queried as to what “all the fuss is about”.

If you’ve bought into the idea or A/B’d a few, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. I’ve also never used a genuine turtle shell pick as a baseline. I have no idea if this is driven by “everything vintage being better” or if there’s some truth behind how great they sound and play. I do know that they weren’t thick!

Endangered Species – the Hawksbill Turtle

Findings

So far, I have tried just three different boutique picks and chose my trusty medium stiff (0.73 mm) DuPont Tortex pick as a baseline. Tortex Price: less than $0.50 per pick, purchased at 32 picks per package. Tested were the Honey Picks “Bee Keeper’s Stash” a proprietary material from “Deep within the Appalachian Mountains…”. Price: $20 per pick. Second, I tried a beautiful acrylic material from Clayton in a thickness of 1.2 mm. Price: $15 per pick. And, third, I tried Dunlop’s entry into higher priced picks, though at $13 for a pack of three ($4 per pick) they are far from the picks from Tone Slab or Blue Chip which range from $30 to $60 per pick.

Of the ones I’ve tried, Dunlap’s “Primetone” in the large, triangular shape, with a nice right hand bevel and a thickness of 1.4 mm has become my new pick of choice. Thirteen bucks for a package of three. I’ve been using one, almost daily, for about two months. While it took me a week to become accustomed to its less bright, but more even across the tonal spectrum sound, it was worth the effort. I’m glad because after initially dismissing it, I gave it an even longer, more intensive second chance. It’s got great grip and for me is the ideal thickness and stiffness. I don’t foresee myself changing picks again, but it could still happen with the two or three picks I’ve yet to order.

To be continued…

An Adirondack Thanksgiving

The pictured Irish blessing is simply one that has always struck a chord with me. No more beautiful words have ever been strung together.

This is more of a story on the Thanksgivings of my boyhood, an amalgam of the various pieces and parts of a number of Thanksgivings blended into one. It would be impossible for me to choose a singular Thanksgiving from this period of my life, but, in looking back over my many years, these stand alone amidst my most cherished Thanksgiving memories.

When I was a boy, my brother, sister, parents and I would often gather to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with my grandparents in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. As kids, we were fortunate enough to have both our paternal grandparents and our maternal grandmother and extended families living within twenty miles of one another in some of the most beautiful country in all of the northeast.

By this time of year, the popular tourist region had slowed after the leaves of autumn had fallen. It would by then be cold and the days short, particularly that far north. We would have seen the first of the many winter snows and, back in the 70’s, the snow ran deep upon the land throughout the winter months.

My immediate family lived roughly ninety minutes to the south in the Saratoga area, north of the state’s capitol of Albany. Either the night before or early Thanksgiving morning, the five of us would excitedly pile in for the drive. It was not unusual for my dad to drive us there through a winter storm or at least some snow squalls on route. We’d be taking the “Northway”, a section of I-87 running north from Albany to the Canadian border. I always loved that it was formally named that by the state. If we were driving at night, I distinctly recall the mesmerizing effect of the snow coming towards us, arcing over the hood of the car. I would stare out the window and have skiers dreams as I would be skiing at my favorite mountain, Whiteface, at least one if not two days over the holiday weekend. As I came of age, I’d have to choose between whitetail deer hunting with my dad (another of my favorite things and it remain that way until after college when I moved west, to Colorado).

My younger sister and brother would typically fall into a deep slumber at some point during the drive and the car would mostly be silent with me awake in the backseat staring at the snow blowing by and both parents quiet, spinning down from the work-a-day world, he as an engineering supervisor for the state and she as an assistant manager for a bank. It wasn’t lost on me that the adult world wasn’t full of fun and games.

We’d get off the Northway and travel west, then north on Highway 9N passing several Adirondack landmarks such as Chapel Pond, the trailhead to Giant Mountain, and through well-known small Adirondack towns such as Keene Valley, where my mother grew up and the gateway to the High Peaks region, a large geologic cluster of forty-six mountains over 4,000 feet above sea level (ASL), and Keene, the gateway to Mt. Van Hovenburg (the one and only Olympic bobsled course in the US for half a century) and Lake Placid, a two-time site of the Winter Olympics.

When we hit the tiny town of Upper Jay, we’d cross the bridge over the East Branch of the Au Sable river, travel the last mile and a half, turn left up the steep concrete driveway which was built by my grandfather, and we were there! This was my dad’s home until he went off to college. We were all “home for the holidays”! To us kids, this was every bit as much home as was our house in a subdivision that ninety miles south. My dad still kept his room there with clothes and hunting and fishing gear. I would eventually populate his room with my own clothes and gear and we would share that room, with the now two twin beds, during our numerous trips “Up North” to hunt and fish.

The excitement was almost palpable as we walked in, and, after bliss-filled greetings with our grandparents in the kitchen, head straight for the great room to feel the kind of fire only my grandfather could build in his handcrafted granite and marble fireplace with the look of having held a thousand fires burning into the night. This was no ordinary fireplace, but a masterpiece built with my grandfather’s master craftsman’s hands, Huge, rectangular shaped hunks of granite with giant slabs of marble for the hearth and mantle. I believe he lifted each stone into place alone. Some of these pieces must have weighed a hundred pounds, or more Applying mortar and setting and leveling them solo would have been no mean feat.

At the west end of the room there was a long day bed and above it, a large picture window that we, as kids, could stare out of and view wildlife on the white pine filled hillside maybe seventy feet away.

Nye/Stone Homestead – Just up the road. Photo Credit to my Dad

We’d see all sorts of songbirds and partridges, squirrels, an occasional deer, porcupine, skunk, and once we caught a rare glimpse of a pine marten. The area was wild and many woodland creatures stayed out of sight. They had not yet become habituated to humans as many creatures living near human settlements have today. There were numerous large white pines surrounding the house providing shade in the summer and some protection from winter winds. Winter night-time temperatures regularly dipped to ten or fifteen below zero. Thanksgiving temperatures were more hospitable but it could still get quite cold, cold enough for snow to remain on the ground until the following spring.

If we’d driven up the night before, we’d, the seven of us, would gather in the great room and enjoy each other’s company for a short time before going off to bed. As I remember it, the house used heating oil stored in a hulking black tank in the cellar which fed a boiler and the boiler fed the heat registers in the upstairs sleeping quarters. Many of my older relatives had lived through the Great Depression, so they were frugal enough that most people today would find the lifestyle extremely uncomfortable. Register delivered heat was expensive, so, the fireplace was the home’s main source of heat. I don’t recall how many cords of firewood would be put up each fall, but I believe the wood shed must have held four or five cords. It is from them that I learned (and came to enjoy) keeping a cold house. The cellar doubled as cold storage for my grandmother’s canning operation with all sorts of fruit jams, pickled cucumbers, beans, tomatoes and other canned goods from the large garden. Two large freezers held an ample supply of frozen foods and quantities of both beef and venison. Other staples, including vegetables from the garden and sacks filled with potatoes, were stored in the root cellar which my grandfather had dug into the hillside when he built the garage and workshop. Again, being of the Depression Era, many of my relatives lived a quasi-subsistence lifestyle heavily reliant on their gardens and venison from deer harvested during hunting season each year. I looked up to them in a neverending awe and years later I would come to emulate their lifestyle, or, as close as I could come to it.

When I was old enough, I remember getting up early while the others were still asleep and building the morning fire. Learning how to build a good fire was just one of a thousand lessons I would carry with me for the rest of my life. Roughly an hour later, my grandmother would be serving up Thanksgiving breakfast replete with popovers (a tradition carried forward by my mom and then each of her offspring) pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hand-squeezed orange juice. I’d go out on the porch to read how cold it had gotten that night. Back then, before global warming had taken its firm grip on the environment, there was almost always enough snow to cover the ground completely, and, by Thanksgiving, temperatures were likely to dip from ten degrees above to just below zero (-F). By February, snowbanks lining the local roads would grow to five feet, or more.

The morning had us doing something outside. My four-years younger brother, Adam, and I might be out on the front porch practicing with our matching model 9422 Winchester rifles as given to us one fine Christmas when I might have been all of ten and he, just six. It was during times like this that gave my three-years-younger sister, Kristi, her own special time with our grandparents. This was important, and, though I didn’t piece it together as a kid, the Stone Adirondack household was very much a man’s world. My father had been an only child amongst not only his own parents, but my grandmother’s brother (my great uncle Bub) and aunt Rosemary and sister (my great aunt Rose) and uncle Francis. After retiring as a construction superintendent on industrial-scale projects all over the country and then closer to home in the Albany area, my grandfather seemed to be very much his own man and clearly enjoyed working alone. He could almost always be found outside working on the house he had refurbished, in his garage/workshop, or out on the property. Then my brother and I came along to share in all that masculine glory while my sister was left to carve her own way, which, incredibly, she somehow managed to do. Time spent with our grandmothers (on both sides) and other, older female Adirondack relatives had its own deep rewards. Adirondack women were strong willed, with powerful minds and were not to be trifled with. Our now eighty-five year-old mother is a torchbearer for that lineage.

We might then travel a mile up the road to go skating in a slough that my great uncle Bub would plow and trim back the willows so that we kids had our own private skating rink, at the edge of his section of woods and large hay meadow, virtually in the middle of nowhere except to be accompanied by nature, herself. When we were a bit older we would spend bitterly cold nights skating and playing hockey while some of the adults would join us, hanging-out near the warmth of a large bonfire. We would visit with my great uncle Bub and great aunt Rosemary, absolutely perfect human beings who never had the good fortune of having children of their own. The rest of the morning might be spent at my great aunt Rose and great uncle Francis’s loving home a mile and a half to the south, along the Au Sable river. At each stop, we’d be fed something from the family’s Thanksgiving recipe book.

By the time we returned to our grandparents’ house, we were already overfed for the day and Thanksgiving dinner was to be served in just an hour, maybe two. This is where things get a bit fuzzy for me. My dad had probably gotten up hours before dawn to go hunting. He preferred to hunt alone and his favored place for at least forty years was high up on Cascade mountain, a steep and rocky mountain just a thirty minute drive from his boyhood home where all of us were waiting for him to walk in through the door and tell us all that he’d gotten a Thanksgiving day buck! He would arrive just in time for our giant turkey dinner. After I turned fourteen, which was still several years away, I would be joining him. My mom would have been feeling a strong gravitational pill to be surrounded by not only us, but her own large family in Keene Valley. It is my best recollection that, as kids, we would be spending part of Thanksgiving or at least Thanksgiving weekend with her and her amazing family full of Adirondack men (uncles, grown cousins) that I also revered. My aunts were fine Adirondack women, as was my mom.

A selfie of my brother, Adam up “on the ledges” of Ebenezer Mountain, Part of Which is on the Nye/Stone Homestead

But, as memory serves, there were many years that my mother shared her Thanksgiving with us at my grandmother and grandfather Stone’s home before heading to her childhood home in Keene Valley on Thanksgiving night. Again, I am uncertain as to this part and how it all fit in. Some years, with the exception of my dad, the rest of us would break Thanksgiving bread with my mom’s side of the family. Any way you put it, as siblings within the greater context of the holiday season, couldn’t have had it any better.

Dinner would come at around 4 PM, as darkness was beginning to fall, the late afternoon light being blocked by Ebenezer mountain , which stood as a sentinel, protecting us from the busy world from which we came for the weekend.

Traditional Stone Family Thanksgiving Blessing

The spread of food which had been presented before us took my grandmother much of the preceding day and all of Thanksgiving morning and afternoon to prepare. But before passing plates, there were several moments of utter quiet as we each reflected on our good fortune to be associated with such an incredible family. In the earliest years, my grandmother would read the above prayer and as we grew, each of us children would read these same words. It was a rare moment of contemplation, solemnity, and joy all wrapped in a warm blanket of love and gratitude. Only then were we as kids allowed to partake in the feast set before us.

The Story Behind Pickguards

Originally Written for Quora

My favorite part of a guitar isn’t the beautiful woodgrain, ornate wood figuring, the shape and size of the instrument, or the nice appointments like a maple binding, or the style and colors of the back seam, it’s the pickuard the builder chose to use to augment the overall beauty and particular look of the guitar. Vintage style nickel “Waverly-style tuning machines are something else that immediately catches my eye.

Some years ago, when there was a shift toward more pickgaurd styles and a much broader range of designs and colors, I began to be curiously fascinated by them, particularly tortoiseshell guards. I spent some time researching the history and materials used over the last century.

The first tortoiseshell pickguards didn’t come from a tortoise, at all, but from the now endangered hawksbill sea turtle. What a beautiful animal. The practice of using this obviously gorgeous creature to make all manner of ornate things such as ladies hair combs, belt buckles, mirrors and hairbrushes, was first used over a hundred years ago. Pickguards from this era are so rare that I couldn’t find one online. These pickgaurds would be still attached but in very poor condition on guitars more than a hundred years old, and not many guitars from that period have survived. Other extremely old pickguards would have become detached from their guitars and would have been unceremoniously thrown away. I did load one photo of a modern pickgaurd for you to compare.

Hunted for centuries, a CITES moratorium was placed in the early 1970’s on hunting, sale, or trade of this creature and it’s beautiful shell. Suddenly, the use of “tortoiseshell” became illegal, but I recollect seeing guitars from the late 70’s still adorned with turtle shell pickguards. I suppose, in practice. it took a few years for the moratorium to settle in on remaining stocks.

Since then, several materials have been or are still in used today, such as various forms of plastic including nylon and PVC. It wasn’t until the advent of “genuine Italian celluloid” after WWII that a material as beautiful as tortoiseshell began to make inroads and, within a decade, became the preferred pickguard material for the entire industry. Suddenly, all sorts of color combinations became available and every major guitar brand used nothing but high-quality celluloid acetate. You can see some of those different options in the photo showing celluloid sheets, from which pickguards are manufactured or made one at a time, by hand. Today, the number of boutique pickquard makers is growing and for prices ranging from $35 to over $100, a fair amount of money can be spent on buying a custom, handmade pickguard. These custom made pickguards can be absolutely beautiful and when the right one is chosen for a given guitar, it can give that guitar an entirely new look. The process for removing an old pickguard and installing a new one is not difficult but does require some focus and attention so as to not cause damage to the guitar’s finish. As always, you can reduce any angst you might have by taking the job to a qualified luthier.

As they say, “all good things come to an end” and, today, there’s a shortage of high-quality celluloid stock. For a brief period thirty-plus years ago, celluloid acetone was being made in the US, but environmental regulations made it impossible to compete with Chinese manufactured celluloid, which is where the bulk of the world’s supply comes from today.

With this shortage, inventors have been hard at it making hybrid celluloid -epoxy resin pickgaurds. All resin pickguards are also being made.This may be the way the industry is headed, but to my knowledge no single manufacturing company is making them on a production scale. These pickgards can be beautiful to look at but have a rubbery, flexible feel and are about twice as thick as celluloid sheets. Some people love them and some haven’t gotten used to the idea. Prices range from $35 to around $70. Some of these makers have more experience working with this resin based material, so it may be worth spending a little more on a more established maker. Personally, I prefer celluloid but I do not know if the current shortage is long or short-term.

Here are some celluloid pickgard examples from my own guitars:

Examples of Various Celluloid Acetate Pickguards

I have switched-out the stock pickguards with some custom made pickgusrds on several of these guitars. I was completely happy with the stock pickaurds on others.

A Couple of Examples of Resin Pickguards, Resin and Genuine Turtle Shell Picks

Thanks for reading “my walk down pickguard lane”.

Backing Down: Not on my Worst Day!

Recently, I was forced to relearn an important lesson, a lesson that originated from within my DNA and reinforced many times over from numerous life experiences. I am sixty-four.

It began innocently enough while my wife was out walking our three dogs on a trail we’ve made that follows our fenceline on all four sides. She came in and told me of a fellow who was mowing the property just across the road. I had just had abdominal surgery to rid me of an undiagnosed infectious mass of fluid that had been growing behind my liver and had hospitalized me several times over the past two and a half years. I was just getting to the point where I could walk around with a cane but I hadn’t been able to walk outside for over a month and was unstable and still in a lot of pain.

Some Context Leading Up to That Day

The surgery I am referring to was the last stop on the train to resolve a serious illness that I had been battling for over two years. To say the least, it was an invasive surgery and involved shifting my organs to look for more infectious material, some of which had to be cut away. I lost a liter of blood and required a transfusion, both things unforeseen in anything the surgeon might run into while being able to finally view the extent of the problem. I did not know how it would have been possible for me to acquire such an obscure illness unless it was connected to an emergency gall bladder surgery that I had gotten several years before.

The gall bladder surgery was performed at one o’clock in the morning, sometime back in 2019, and not by a surgeon qualified to perform that type of surgery. After weeks of trying to get me to go, I was literally on death’s doorstep by the time my wife was able to get me in the truck and en route to the closest emergency room. It was only then that I learned of how bad off I truly was. My gall bladder had turned necrotic and the surrounding area was gangrenous. This led to an advanced case of sepsis. I didn’t know who or where I was and couldn’t name the president of the United States. After that woefully messy surgery I was hospitalized for nine days until my blood was cleared for release. As bad as the surgery and overall experience had been, I was thankful. There was no doubt that they had saved my life. It was my fault that the problem was allowed to progress to such a state.

Not long after returning home from the gall bladder surgery, there had been some signs that my innards were still in distress and my wife called the hospital surgeon’s office on a number of occasions to inquire about the pain and bloating I was experiencing again and was told that those were normal symptoms after a surgery like mine. After six months had passed, the pain had lessened but the bloating gradually continued until it looked like I was pregnant in the week leading up to an emergency, twenty-one day hospitalization in January of 2023. That stay included pumping four liters of nefarious, infected puss from my abdomen and then an “all hands on deck” rush to diagnose the root cause. By the time I went home, my blood had been studied ad nauseum, a cornucopia of cultures had been grown, I’d undergone every type of imaging there is, and still, I remained without a diagnosis. In other words, it was still with me and would be returning.

I was assigned to a lauded infectious disease doctor and went on a two year odyssey to diagnose the problem and, with some luck, save what was left of my life. Sooner or later , this infection was going to kill me, the bacteria were that pernicious. Without knowing where the fluid was coming from, there was no way to stop it from leaking into my abdomen inviting another round of infection and accelerated fluid buildup requiring three more trips to to hospital to chase down the infection and drain the fluid. At one point, I was married to an external fluid drain (an ugly bag and a catheter) for four months. There were three other drain installations but for just one to three months. During this time but unrelated (I think), I was diagnosed with high-grade bladder cancer. For the cancer, it’s been sixteen months and three surgeries and I’ll be in treatment for what looks like some time to come. It looked good for seven months, but I’d been told of its return just days before the incident.

It is all of this that I was carrying on my shoulders that day.

The Incident

Effectively, I had been unable to attend to our country home and property for about four years. For a perfectionist who’s always taken pride in taking care of my things, I’d begun to lose my mind. Because we have three wonderful dogs and an inordinate number of rattlesnakes on our Central Texas property, my biggest priority is in keeping the grass cut. If I don’t get to it in a few weeks, the brush begins to take hold and the native grasses will grow to three feet. It had been over a month since I’d been able to mow it with the field mower. I was about to bust with anxiety over not getting to it. But I’m the type of person who’s grown highly accustomed to doing virtually anything and everything myself. If you live in a subdivision, mowing isn’t that much of a chore, but on four acres of Texas brush country, it can be. You need the appropriate (expensive) equipment and there are lots of potential hazards to pay attention to.

I asked Genie to run over and see if the guy had time to swing by to discuss our place when he was done with his current job. I had a pit in my stomach and I hadn’t even spoken with him. It was in the heat of the day and there’s no way I could hobble around and show him everything. The main thing was whether he had a mowing setup that could handle tall grass and undulating, somewhat rough terrain. Though it looks pretty when mowed, it’s not a golf course. His equipment checked out and, since I knew he didn’t have insurance for his one-man business, I asked him “If you’re out there and you somehow have a failure with your equipment, does that come out of your pocket, or mine?”. He said what I was hoping he’d say, “Mine…I would never…”. Since I couldn’t show him the property and the potentially now hidden obstacles, I showed him pics of the various sections of the property so he could see what it looked like just after a mowing. This is where he grumbled something like “I don’t need to see no stinkin’ pictures”. I quizzed him on it and, in an aggravated voice said “I’ve been mowing for ten years” and yada yada. I told him that “that had nothing to do with it and that he’d realize the relevancy after he mowed over one of three old, six inch stumps obscured by the now tall grass…stumps that I had pointed out clearly”. He grumbled some more as he walked towards his truck. I almost put it to an end there. He sat on the tailgate of his truck wasting time. I said, ‘do you want the job or not?” He said yes but that he’d first have to run the few miles down the road to get gas. It was 99 degrees and I could see the signs of heat exhaustion creeping up on him. I suggested that, since he’d just done that job across the way that I’m sure he was feeling the heat and probably pretty tired and that he show-up in the morning, fueled up and ready to go. I asked him again for a price, either a not-to exceed or an hourly rate so I could figure out how much I was willing to spend. He got in his truck to get gas and said he’d give me a price when he got back and drove away.

With the surgery and ridiculously painful recovery, I hadn’t been out in the mid-day heat (approaching 100 deg that day) and I could feel my strength waning, but I think I was the better off between us. I went into the house to wait and it was right at an hour when he got back from gassing-up just three miles down the road. I didn’t mention it, only asked for a price. He still didn’t have one so, without wanting to over-expose myself with this guy, I offered to pay him $120 for three hours and we’d take a look and adjust things if necessary. I showed him my rig and said that it takes me between three and four hours to do the whole property. His machine had a heavy duty deck and actually had the same engine as mine.

After two and a half hours he came back and loaded his machine before we did our agreed upon walk around. He said he was done and had been out there for five hours. This wasn’t the first bald-faced lie I’d heard that day. No one had ever been brazen enough to look me in the eye and expect me to acquiesce to such a lie. That was it. My patience, which had already been tested to its absolute limit that day, left my body and I felt something very powerful take its place: immediate and unadulterated adrenaline-assisted anger. He’d already been speaking to me in a much louder, more aggressive tone for the past twenty minutes. I kept my tone cool and unflustered, with each word being spoken firmly and measured in terms of not elevating the sound of my voice to match his. I kept my wits and readied myself for what was coming. “That’s the third of three seriously bad lies you’ve told me today and all I want from you now is to pack up your shit and get the fuck off of my property…NOW!” He approached me so that his face was no further than six inches from my face. He started to scream something and no sooner than his spittle hit my face, I shoved him so hard that he barely stood, backpedaling at speed to keep from falling until he slammed into the open driver’s side door and crumpled to the ground. The distance from where I shoved him to where he now lay was between twelve and fifteen feet. I don’t know where that power came from. It was a power I had known during my more youthful years but power that shouldn’t have been there before the stitches from my surgery had been pulled and I was still half out of it from the immense abdominal pain which remained. At first, I thought I might have opened the surgical wound or tore an abdominal muscle, but there was no time for that now. I heard “I’d come right back at you if you didn’t need that cane and hadn’t just gotten out of the hospital!”. I replied “don’t let that stop you!” He threatened me by saying “I should go home, grab my gun. and come back and put some holes in you!” I laughed and said “try me! Or, how ‘bout the one that I’m sure is in the glove compartment of your truck, eight feet away.” This is one of the poorest counties in Central Texas, and both open and concealed carry are legal here. You can bet that people of all persuasions either have a gun on their person or, if they don’t plan on being far from their truck, there’ll be one under the seat or in the glove box. He didn’t respond but just sat there, propped up by his truck door huffing and puffing until I walked over to him “Now, unless you want to continue, I told you to get the fuck off of my property!”, but, I added “I don’t ever want to see you out here again, you dumb son-of-a bitch!” After getting into his truck, I gave him $140 because it was hot, and he was very hot, and I was still happy to have the mowing checked off my list for a week, or two. Plus, temporary emotions aside, it was the right thing to do. If he had finished it, I had planned on giving him $200, which is the amount he said he would have changed as he peeled out of our driveway, flipping me off and screaming obscenities as he went. This was a sixty-eight year old man acting no differently than a four year old. Somewhere during the scuffle, he yelled “twenty years ago, me and some brutha’s used to kick serious ass on white boys like you!” I had not wanted to bring race into the conversation, so I let it go unchallenged. But I couldn’t help myself from laughing in his direction.

After all was said and done, I went inside only to have my wife castigate me for “losing my cool”. I told her that I wouldn’t consider myself a man if I hadn’t. My insides were churning over what had just happened. She hadn’t been able to hear my voice but had heard his as she watched from the front door. I said “that ought to tell you something.” When he got so far into my personal space, yelling at the top of his lungs, that by itself was enough for me to legally defend myself. He obviously didn’t realize it, but getting that close to me had put me at an advantage and being up against my chest gave me numerous options and some strong leverage. The danger had grown to be imminent and there was no more time for thinking, only acting by giving him the hardest shove I could muster in the condition I was in.

As a younger man, even into my fifties, I’d had more confrontations than I can count. A few were pretty serious, but, because of my back problems and health issues like I just described, my body has paid a steep price and I had lost more than half of my strength and mobility. For an athletic, forever on the move, and well conditioned guy, this has been very difficult to handle. There is no way to describe what your body and mind go through in the seconds before an imminently dangerous encounter with another human being. Every fiber of muscle is receiving all the adrenaline your adrenal glands can pump out. Primal chemicals are released from your brain and mind and body come together in a vastly heightened state, so much so that it would be impossible to not react with all the resources you can render. For me in my condition, I had no choice but to hold my ground, dispense with the cane and repel this person, hopefully hard enough to put an end to things and “defuse” the situation. It had been a long time since I’d experienced that kind of adrenaline rush and it felt damned good to feel so alive and in control! I actually told him as much and thanked him for his contribution.

After things settled and the house quieted, I told my wife that I was proud of the way I handled myself and wouldn’t change a thing except for listening to my gut during those hours earlier and asking him to leave before he even got started on the job. This was the lesson I was reminded of that day and will be my only regret from the day of the incident. After collecting herself and hearing me out, my wife apologized, said that she was proud of me, and thanked me for protecting our home and family, particularly in the condition I was in. Our family is comprised of she and I and our three wonderful dogs, whom I’m sure would have been only too pleased to have gotten a piece of this guy. All I had to do was call out to my wife to let them out. They would have heard the entire thing and been chomping at the bit the entire time. It never occurred to me because I’m sure I was wanting to keep them out of harm’s way. If there were a time for him to go for a gun, which I am certain was just a reach across his seat away, that would have been it.

What is that old expression, “all’s well that ends well”. That’s what it had boiled down to. Of course, it crossed my mind that he could very well show up at any time only this time it would have been with sons. buddies, or both, But, in the course of our not-so-friendly dialogue, I had left him with something to think about, and that was that nothing would make me happier than for him to come busting through my front door on the darkest of nights. He knew damned well that I’d be lying in wait with my own arsenal and dogs at the ready. I never mentioned having guns of my own. That wasn’t necessary. Everyone in these parts is well-armed. On top of that. I grew up around guns, hunting, and shooting. We were taught to never let-on about the family guns, even to good friends. There was no reason to and it only provides fodder for that information to fall into the wrong hands and gives those of the criminal sort a reason to break in and steal what you’ve got, and what they want. In the 70’s, long before people would do anything to get their hands on prescription drugs, gun theft was the root cause of many a break-in.

It’s over now and with any luck, I will never again have to deal with such an event. We live a quiet, extremely rural life and I intend to keep it that way.