OLD DAN TUCKER

Three years is a long time to have a crush on someone. Especially if the first year goes by and you’ve never even touched them. Just lots of staring and fantasies.

Marty played the guitar. He’d sit on the lawn at the Park with some of the other guys and play hit songs from his favorite bands. I’d sit there mesmerized watching his long fingers flick the strings of the guitar and absorbing every note. I wondered how long it took him to learn to play ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ Everybody played that song. You had to. It was an anthem. But it never sounded as beautiful as when it came from Marty’s guitar. Jimmy Page could’ve been standing right next to me, wailing through one of those long version guitar solos and I wouldn’t have noticed. All that existed was Marty slumped over his guitar, blond hair hanging in his face and his all-consuming look of concentration. There was no doubt about it, Marty loved music.

So, I figured that was my way in with him, through the music. I had saved some money from my job as a salesgirl at Capwell’s Department Store. I kept it hidden inside my teddy bear. He had come with a music box inside and the little winding knob was on his back. I had surgically removed the music box in an emergency operation one boring day and carefully stitched up the wound leaving about a half an inch hole. The absence of the music box caused a hollow indentation in his back and in an attempt to fill it back up, I stuffed my extra cash inside him. Why it was necessary to hide my money in the first place I don’t remember, but I was at that age where I felt I had to hide everything and my mother was at that age that she felt she had to snoop through everything. I think all mothers snoop when their child starts having secrets and acting in ways they can’t explain. But money wasn’t really something I needed to hide. Not like drugs, or diaries, or the birth control pills my friend Sandy kept hidden. I remember the day she came to school in dark sunglasses and we all teased her as she approached. She didn’t laugh or speak, she just kept walking toward three giggling girls and when she reached us, she pulled off her glasses and revealed a huge black eye. We, of course, stopped laughing and went into concerned friend mode. We pummeled her with questions and she began to cry. All she could get out was that her mom found her birth control pills.

So anyway, I hopped on the 72 bus and got off at El Cerrito Plaza, walked up to the shopping Center and bee-lined straight to the music store with the pretty wooden guitars hanging in the window. I let the man show me a few and I hugged their polished wood bodies as if I knew what I was doing. I strummed the nylon strings. I knocked on the wood, cause I think I heard somewhere you’re supposed to do that. Then I bought the cheapest. I paid my thirty-five dollars and left with my guitar and songbook, ready to conquer this instrument and win Marty’s love.

My parents thought the guitar was just a whim. They didn’t believe I would stick with anything longer than a week, or at least that’s what they always used to say. I had first asked for a piano when I was seven. They said “No” despite the fact that I spent every chance I got pounding out songs on pianos wherever we’d go and teaching myself to play “Exodus.” Even then they didn’t think I was serious about wanting a piano. “You’ll play it for a week, then you’ll lose interest in it,” they said. “Then we’ll be stuck with a piano.” They didn’t see I wasn’t the kind of child who’s lost interest in anything quickly. They didn’t see I never let go.

I sat in my room day after summer day, plucking at nylon strings and flipping through pages of folk tunes. The man in the store said I should put off learning Led Zeppelin for a while and start with some simple tunes. I focused on one. My fantasy was that I’d go to the park and all the guys would be sitting around on the lawn. Marty would be there with his guitar and I’d sit next to him and when he got tired of playing and laid it down on the grass, I’d pick it up and start playing my perfectly rehearsed version of “Old Dan Tucker.” The guys would all be impressed with my dexterity and nimble chord changes. Marty would have a reason to be in love with me and we’d live happily ever after.

But Marty and the guys stopped bringing their guitars to the Park before I mastered Old Dan Tucker. My guitar sat in the corner and gathered dust. Every time my mother walked by my room she’d say it was a waste of money. So I hid it in the closet. But it wasn’t a waste of money. I hadn’t gotten tired of it.

I still wanted the guitar.

I still wanted a piano.

And I still wanted Marty Koutz.