I guess it's best to start at the beginning, the very beginning. I built my first guitar. "Wow!", you might say. Yes, it was quite the guitar. It took about an hour to draw and cut out of layered cardboard, embellish the finish and add the 6 'string' strings. I was in 5th grade at Sembach Elementary, Sembach A.F.B., Germany. Elvis was taking the world by storm and I wanted to take my creation to school for 'Show & Tell'. Do they still do that?

Well, Charles Hoover, my friend and rival classmate, brought a pretty smucky cardboard mockup the previous week and was a hit with the other kids. Back in the mid fifties most had never seen a guitar in person. How else could you get away with a stunt like that?

I schemed to out do him and my efforts put me first with our newly established competition. Alas, my victory was short lived as Charles appeared a couple of weeks later with a real guitar. I don't know how he managed it but I was sad and dejected for quite some time. Of course I asked my parents for a guitar but that was not possible within the limited budget of an enlisted man's salary. I don't even remember any encouragement about future acquisition either.

Christmas was coming soon but that wouldn't help. My dad's father became seriously ill and we prepared for an early return to the States as his tour of duty was expiring in a few months. We all got our presents the week before Christmas so we could see them before there were packed away for shipment. Somehow my Mom and Dad managed to make way, as parents often do, to get that special gift. It was a beautiful deep, dark, rich finished small bodied instrument of superb quality. I didn't know that then but I do now. I must have held it for just minutes before the packing began.

To the right you'll see a Fender Shenandoah acoustic 12-string, my prized Six & Twelve Double neck Mosrite and my 1961 Les Paul Standard with the patented sideways vibrola (whammy bar). The amplifier is a transistor type 200 watt piggyback by Kustom. It is the blue flexed color. This was a nice sounding amp. I used it up to and through the Spoils Of War era.

Sometime about 1970 or so, I purchased a new Fender Dual Showman at Skip's Axe-In-Hand in Urbana. This tiny emporium tucked away in a nook on campus of the University of Illinois was filled with guitars, both electric and acoustic, a wide range of amplifiers and effects petals, picks, strings and whatever. They even had a closet sized room for guitar lessons. It was usually complimented with a few pickers who dropped by for great conversation and stories with Skip Paul, the owner.

Here I am doing an electric solo set with my 1961 Les Paul. The club is Ruby Gulch on Green St. in 'campustown' on the U of I in Champaign - Urbana circa 1974. I had my own power trio doing an eclectic array of originals, and radically rearranged Beatles, rock and Blues. We called ourselves Long Hard Road after a song I wrote in '71 after a severe hand injury involving a lawn mower. (More about that later, maybe...)

Photos: (top left) About age 14 with my Framus (top right) Three guitars at Rofran Studio (bottom left) '61 Les Paul with Annie of Spoils Of War on the Illini Union patio, U of I, Urbana. Note the Kustom amplifier, (bottom right) Les Paul again with Fender Dual Showman amp.The large cabinet in front is an Altec Lansing A7 'Voice Of The Theatre' speaker. I owned and operated a recording studio, one of only a few in downstate Illinois at the time. I found these studio monitors were also great on live gigs. There's a Maestro Echoplex cartridge tape delay sitting on the Dual Showman.